Recycled Love Poems

What happens when a poem loses it's meaning?

    She stared blankly at the pages in front of her. Those words looked so unfamiliar now, so daunting and cruel. They looked fake and stupid. How could I write something like this? she thought. Was I really ever this happy? The very idea of it seemed farfetched and crazy. Impossible even.
    But the words were there. In her handwriting. They had once been an expression, but what were they now? What happens to the poems that lose their meaning? Do they die like the part of the poet that wrote it? Or do they continue to exist as a sad memory. A reminder of what has been lost.
    She turned a few pages over. Now this was more like it, with words like “shattered” and “broken” instead of “love” and “forever”. This seemed like the real her. Like the her she has always known. When the last part of her died, this part was reborn. The reincarnation of a poem. But has the other officially died?
    Flipping between the pages, she grew more and more confused. There was no gradual transition, just a sudden change. It made her realize that although she did lose a lot, she gained a lot as well, but this didn’t solve her problem. Her dilemma. What to do with the old poems?
    The feelings didn’t exist anymore, and reading about them ripped at the wounds she was working to patch together. There were soft edges hidden under the fuzzy velvet words. These edges tore right through the duct tape holding her in one piece. Thinking of this made her want to burn them.
    But they were good poems. Good poems that met a sudden and cruel death. They didn’t deserve to be targeted to such anger and disdain, they deserved to be looked upon fondly. But they still hurt, they came back and ripped her apart. They proved to her that all good things end badly. But they were still good while they lasted, weren’t they?
    So she still stares at the notebook. She wrote those poems once, mixing her soul into the ink from the pen. And her soul is burned onto the pages, but she needs her soul back. She needs to give it to the new poems, the ones that are now her.
    Then she starts to think again, maybe one day she will feel the same way about her new poems. That it was part of her past that won’t be forgotten, but is a painful reminder of what once was. Maybe she’ll need her soul back to write again of happiness, although the idea seems crazy now. Maybe, like everyone keeps saying to her, life will go on.
    But her problem is still there. She is looking at her notebook, filled to the brim with powerful emotion, and sighs. She needs to forget, but she needs to remember. She needs to live again, but in order for that to happen, she needs to die as well. And these poems cannot be used for someone else, because the feeling can’t ever be truly replicated. So for now, she closes the cover and imagines little gravestones all around her. On each gravestone is a title of a dead poem.

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Courtney Shaddock

Author's Note

Can't decide on the title. Recycled Love Poems or The Death of a Poem?