My Heart Is A Dam Breaking Poem by Emma Atkinson

I don't want to be in love,
But I am.
My heart is a bursting dam
I am trying so hard to contain.
I swear I will go insane.
I will lose my mind.

I will not think of him again.
I will not,
Even when all I can see is his face.
I scrub and scrub, hands red and blistered,
But nothing can erase-
No, nothing can erase him from my dreams.
I sit on the floor and hear the echoes of my screams
As they rise blood-red in the night.

His face haunts me like a ghost,
Lurking behind every thought passing through my head
So that I lie sleepless in bed.
My dreams are only nightmares,
Surrounded by the silhouette of his frame.
My heart held captive by this cruel game:
He loves me, he loves me not.

I am not the one he sought.
He has gone to love another.
And I am left to utter
Words he cannot hear,
Words I fear
I cannot stop.
They flood my heart,
A tsunami in the making.

The dam is breaking,
And I am shaking.
I am bound to blow apart,
Splintering the dam to my heart,
So that it lies beyond repair.

I do not have enough plaster lies
To silence my soul's relentless cries
That tear down like a raging current
On the hillside of my heart.
There is no deterrent,
No hope that the landscape of my soul
Will emerge unscathed.
That lies beyond my control,
And I have none.

The wreckage has already begun.
The dam is breaking
And it is taking
All of me not to collapse.
I do not know how much longer I can last.
Eventually, the dam will fall.
This I know
Because I cannot let go.
I love too much,
And the strain of it is breaking me.

Tears like torrent flow.
I am not the one he loves.
That is the one thing I know,
The one truth that is crushing my heart in its jaws.
Yes, he loves me not.
A thought that sinks into me,
Ugly, discolored rot,
That weakens the already fragile dam.
Soon it will break.

The more I fight, the stronger the current grows,
Assaulting the dam with frantic blows,
And the dam comes crashing down,
One wretched flood.
It tastes of dull iron, like my blood.
I am gagging on my own tears,
The desolation running me through like spears.
I can do nothing but cry.

The truth is a whirlpool so strong it pulls me down.
There will be no help from above,
And truth has swallowed me.
I am in love.