| Your heart is breaking. Love has left your | | | | |
| life, or someone you love has become ill or | | | | For years she's been telling me |
| died. How can you possibly think about | | | | |
| writing at a time like that?Not long ago, I | | | | to reach out and touch someone |
| felt the same way. I sat in my van in an | | | | |
| airport parking lot watching the planes take | | | | |
| off; knowing inside one of those huge metal | | | | |
| machines was the man I loved. He wasn't | | | | It's almost like being there, |
| leaving for a quick trip or even a week long | | | | |
| trip. No, he was leaving for a six weeks to a | | | | if only you'll pick up the phone. |
| country thousands of miles away from his | | | | |
| home, his children and me.My heart sank as I | | | | |
| started the van and pulled out of the parking | | | | |
| lot. It's not like we haven't already dealt | | | | But the whine of long-distance |
| with this before. He's been on this | | | | |
| assignment for awhile now, gone for six | | | | phone lines is deafening. |
| weeks, back for one. Regular as clockwork. | | | | |
| It's enough to drive a sane person mad. Or | | | | |
| drive a writer to write a sad story or poem, | | | | |
| or two, or ten.I write in my journal nearly | | | | The sadness and loss of distance |
| every day now. Mostly I say how much I miss | | | | |
| him and how angry I am our lives are being | | | | cannot be quieted |
| ruled by a company's inability to know what | | | | |
| they were getting into. But I also write | | | | |
| important things to tell him; things the boys | | | | |
| have done, or the dog, or even the rat. And | | | | For years she's been lying |
| I'm also writing again. Not the "get it | | | | |
| published in a magazine" kind of writing, but | | | | to you and to me. |
| a "cleanse your heart of pain" kind.When my | | | | |
| hubby first left back in May, he called me | | | | |
| from Heathrow Airport to let me know his | | | | |
| flight was delayed. He didn't want me to | | | | As I said, not my best work. But it did ease |
| worry about him. The connection we had was | | | | the anger I felt towards the phone company |
| awful. I could barely hear him and he could | | | | and the connection we had. And it made me |
| barely hear me. That call spawned a long | | | | smile, which helped as well.Writing heals a |
| angry entry aimed at the phone company in my | | | | broken heart. No, wait, that's not right. |
| journal, and this poem. Not my best work, but | | | | Writing makes it easier to deal with a broken |
| it was what came out at the time... | | | | heart. And writing is wonderful expression of |
| | | | the pain of being apart. So, when your heart |
| | | | is breaking, sit down and write.Dawn Arkin is |
| | | | an author on |
| | | | |
| | | | which is a site for Love Poetry. Her |
| Ma Bell Lied | | | | portfolio can be found at so stop by and |
| | | | read for a while. |
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