Sometimes heartbreak

By Zeke Shomler

᠅

comes quietly, like a body sliding out of bed
in early morning. Like the heart is a stone and the stone
slips beneath the surface 

of a lake. Sometimes the lake
is a daydream. Sometimes the stone
is the answer to a question

never asked. Still, the chest thumps, dumb, unruly:
a procession of grey footsteps
under skin. And heartbreak is the sheet of ice

across which you must stretch your wind-whipped limbs.
This I know: one is always
leaving something, going 

somewhere else. Like the sky,
learning every night how to be lonely. How the sun slumps
below the cold horizon, the closing

of another bleeding mouth,
and life begins.

᠅

Zeke Shomler is a poet and math educator in Fairbanks, Alaska. His work has appeared in AGNI, Modern Language Studies, The Shore, and elsewhere. zekeshomler.com