Learning to Love Again

Getting back to yourself after a break up can be a difficult addition to the already painful swirl of emotions surrounding you. The Poem “Love After Love” by Derek Walcott focuses on loving the inner self after a relationship ends; moving towards the knowledge that within you is the power to heal.

Love After Love

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other’s welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@giulia_bertelli

 

Leave a comment