It did so silently

You’d think it would be loud: the sound of a shattering heart.

How could something so monumental pass without noise?

You’d think a broken heart would roar

Or scream

Or crack like ice breaking away from a glacier

Or wail like a tsunami siren

Or, at the very least, whisper

No. The day my heart broke, it did so silently.

It didn’t even make the patter of the teardrop that spread like night-blooming jasmine on the canvas of my black jeans.

No.

All that noise a broken heart might’ve made was relegated to the corners of my mind.

All that pounding only sounding in the headache that battered my temples.

Every piece of me froze right along with my heart.

The ice inside acting like glue instead.

Everything went still in me.

I was a statue, stuck in an endless loop of sameness, while the world continued to whirl around me.

You’d think the Earth would stop spinning, caught up in the net of your grief.

But it does not.

Instead, it moves on without you.

You’d think the smell would be caught in their nostrils, too.

That it might catch them unaware the way it does you.

But rain on pavement doesn’t remind them about her little skinned knee like it does you.

You’d think it would taste like blood: the grief–the broken heart.

How could something so bitter taste like sunscreen and cherry popsicles instead?

No. The day my heart broke, it did so silently, tasting of summer, smelling of coconut and petrichor and lightning. And the world still spun.

But she did not move.

And so I remain frozen, too.