Hello, everyone! I hope you’re having a great week so far. School is starting everywhere of all grades. I’ll be starting my final year of graduate school and (hopefully) will secure my Masters at the end of this year. At any rate, I hope everyone is having a great start. Teachers, my heart goes out to you as you start another year which is so unsure and worrisome with a pandemic that refuses to go away and with no clear agreement on procedures. Much love to parents who worry about their kids, especially young ones who cannot get vaccinated as of yet (I know someone whose entire family has already come down with COVID after only sending their kids to school for one week).

Do all you can and be safe!

Recently, I dug out my century-old flash drive and discovered some poetry I created in my undergrad years at Oklahoma City University. I took a critical poetry course, and I enjoyed/feared it so much! That professor did not mess around, and she was a very skilled poet and Shakespearean academic. To this day, I value the time I received learning from her.

The following poem was created in that course. It was my final input on a relationship I had ended in sophomore year of college, a five year relationship with my high school sweetheart, which started out like a teenage novel romance that Judy Blume tried to warn me about (think of her book, Forever), and ended in a painful yet needed breakup. That old, overplayed song: two young loves that everyone told “oh, you’re so cute together,” “you’re going to get married,” “oh, you are relationship goals!”

Yeah, no. Eventually, it was transparently clear that we had grown into very different people. I’m not sure who changed more, but I’m certain it was me. There was too much I had been okay with that immediately became far from okay. The compatibility dissolved and the butterflies simply dropped dead to the floor. I realized I wasn’t okay with staying in a commitment that felt like a settlement. It took me a while to get to the idea that a break up was needed, but once I realized that the sky wasn’t going to fall once it happened, I couldn’t unmake my decision. It was brutal; he was very adamant we could fix things, that if we just tried more that we could get back to how we used to be. But I was tired of trying. The amount of work to “fix” it felt like a mountain that I knew I didn’t have to climb at all. As selfish as I knew it made me in many people’s eyes, I had to do what I felt was right, despite all of the promises we made to each other.

And not long after, Glass Promise became my assignment, and now, it’s a bittersweet memory.

Love it or loathe it, here it is:

Glass Promise

We once stood on hollow ground

and swore a pledge to stand tall:

As long we were with the other,

neither would fall.

But your promise was glass;

it chips so easily at the slightest hit,

but your words and promises

were beautiful and ornate.

I gave you years that carved into the glass,

deeper and sharper until

I could grasp the rose that formed

and its unforgiving thorns could cut my palm.

Our naïve dreams and futures

were colored and shined

through your empty glass promise

and the years lost, the years that were mine.

That last winter was the hardest.

Your words were biting ice,

and our colors faded until

they vanished and left

only cold glass behind.

To save myself, I

took your glass promise,

and I laid it to rest.

Always, it had been fragile anyway,

and I doubted we wouldn’t drop it.

At least now, it won’t shatter.

I hope you enjoyed this poem! Drop a comment below, subscribe to the website, and follow my writer’s page (Abigail Rose, Writer) on Facebook.

Once again, have a great week, new school year, and do everything you can to be safe, healthy, and informed as we carry on into these uncertain times.