By Gala
Date: 19 April 2001
What A Womans Heart Remembers
When a woman's heart is razed,
ravaged
salted against new growth
and still shiny with scars
it is hard on the man
who comes to love her
to understand
how she can hurt
when he did nothing wrong.
When a woman's heart aches
with the wasp sting of betrayal,
when it mourns a love
she never wished to die,
When she doubts everything
but herself more than most,
her need for comfort
might seem like a wild beast,
half starved and ravening
and a man might well wonder
if he will ever have enough
to calm that crazy hunger
even if he were to give his heart
on a silver platter.
When a woman is half mad with grief,
she will ask things
and do things to hurt herself,
be inches from weeping,
and wonder if basic words
are shielding the next blade
that will peel her heart
because her trust has been taken,
and some voice will whisper
that trust is for fools.
The woman's heart will rage,
and you will doubt her
for the sting of her doubt---
and she will weep in silence
rather than admit
how much she has come to need you
how much she craves your love
and how much she fears
that just like before
she won't be enough to hold you
because she never was enough
no not even once
to hold the heart of a man she loved.
This is the hurt
that a woman's heart remembers.
This is the fear she eats
spread thick on every morsel of herself,
while trying to learn to believe
that you are not the one
who dealt her heart
the last viscious blow.
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