Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

‘Such a small world!’ Maybe your world is just small?

That’s the thing about pain: we forget it. Our bodies can withstand more than we give them credit for.

Granny’s painting on mauve lipstick and patting her hair into place so she looks presentable for the doctor.

Just like Maura

She’s iron and I’m something like dust.

Soon I would know you well enough to read your facial expression even when your back was turned.

how lucky I am to have people who love me so much they will let me hate them just in case it helps.

You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, Where can I put it down?

My belly was a ‘she’ and you told me never to lose her.

If you actually look closely at an X-ray of a vagina it looks like a flower.

To help you escape danger, the body suppresses hunger so you have one less thing to think about. You also have fewer constrictions and relaxations of the muscles in

laugh at me, but maybe we could be each other’s soulmates? And then we could let men be just these great nice guys to have fun with?’

Fiona and sarah

It was never something you asked for. I disappeared all on my own.

There’s no one more beautiful than the woman who has taken a man from you. You want to possess her because in doing so you

would possess what he possesses and be closer to him again.

I experience another ‘over’, and this time it’s a promise, to keep on being nice to her. To order expensive takeaways, and go on walks, and watch films that are difficult to understand, because this life could be gorgeous if only I gave myself permission to allow it.

the life we built in this place will always exist somewhere, turning corners in dreams to see Joe in the kitchen smoking out of that window in his tracksuit bottoms that I hid from him, the ones I’m wearing now, or at the table chopping garlic with a podcast on. For us, the house will stay how it was when we were there. In our minds it will always be ours.

That house will always be in our hearts

Perhaps no one ever forgets anyone. We keep parts of them inside us forever and they come out in the moments we need them. Like ghosts who can’t find their way to the afterlife.

Then I think of my life, staying up late to read books I can’t put down. Going to galleries and taking pictures of the words by the paintings because it’s an idea I want to think about more. I have all this energy now just from leaving him alone. And he’s no longer tired because he can do as little as he wants without someone persuading him to do more.

myself. I like this new version of me too much for that. She doesn’t need anyone else to be responsible for her happiness because she can find it on her own.

It’s not checking their phone when they leave it unlocked.

am going to spend more of my life with the lessons we learned together, the person you made me into. So in that way, I’m so thankful we broke up when we did, because it means I get to spend more time with her.