Heartbreaks are part and parcel of any relationship, and everybody copes with them differently. Poems about heartbreak can be your strength in such a situation. They encourage and motivate you to look at the brighter side. A relationship may end, but the memories stay, leading to pain that is not easy to deal with. Even when you move on, these memories may haunt you. But although the consequences of heartbreak can be devastating, coming out of it is possible. We have a list of heartbreak poems to let you know that you are not alone and induce hope for a better future relationship.
Love Breakup Poems
You break up when you know they are not loyal or break the promise of togetherness. Love breakup poems convey the same feelings of a broken heart.
1. After Love
There is no magic any more, We meet as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea – There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But though the pool is safe from storm And from the tide has found surcease, It grows more bitter than the sea, For all its peace. — Sara Teasdale
2. This Was Once a Love Poem
This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads. It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement. It remembers choosing these shoes, this scarf or tie. Once, it drank beer for breakfast, drifted its feet in a river side by side with the feet of another. Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy, dropping its head so the hair would fall forward, so the eyes would not be seen. It spoke with passion of history, of art. It was lovely then, this poem. Under its chin, no fold of skin softened. Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat. What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall. An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks. The longing has not diminished. Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat, the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus. Yes, it decides: Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots. When it finds itself disquieted by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life, it will touch them—one, then another— with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame. — Jane Hirschfeld
3. Oxymoronic Love
Hatred is the new love. Rage is right. Touch is touch. The collars of the coat, turned down, point up. The corners of our hearts are smoothed with rough. Our glass breaks slick, our teeth rip soft. The mollusk of me, shell-less. If the future once was, the past predicted us. The street gives off rhythm. The sun gives off dusk. When we walk, we pour backward. When we have nothing, it’s enough. The hunger leaves us satisfied, the fullness leaves us wrung. The sum of all its parts is whole, the reap of it has roots, not took or plucked. Far apart, we move inside our clothes: open is old, young is closed. The fangs we used to bare are milk teeth grown from gums. The fire we used to be scathed by numbs. We run on the track of our consumption, done. We’ve been ice when liquid is our natural state. We’ve worn our husks, we’ve clenched our fists. We scold and punish, scrape, pay a price. We dole out in slanders what has no weight. We pay in cringing for the moments. We open injuries in one another. We lacerate places that flex like knuckles, crack and grow. We are sipping from the water’s thirst. We were lost at first. From the finish, begun. We undergo the pain the other knows. We are cartoon yards where dogs dig for lost bones. Esoteric, we are full of holes. That need to be filled. That need to be dug. We are under-loved. We are under-known. Give to us and we are downcast and uplifted and sift like water and sand like stone. We are greedy, we are gone. We are helpless, we are prone. Drain us or fill us and we’ll ache a vast installment. Let us empty. Let us alone. Madness is our happiness. Sadness is our home. — Jennifer Militello
4. Love I’m Done With You
You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck after a home-cooked meal? Or notice how the blood on the bottoms of your feet just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird. Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant, but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit. You have more lies about yourself than bodies beneath your bed. Rooting for the underdog. Team player. Hook, line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick that built the walls around the castle in the basement of which is a vault inside of which is another vault inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding. From the inside your house shines and shines, but from outside you can see it’s built from bones. From out here it looks like a graveyard, and the garden’s all ash. And besides, your breath stinks. We’re through. — Ross Gay
5. You Thought
You thought I’d flipped the switch and I hadn’t You thought I’d left the window open And I wouldn’t You thought I’d turn the dial up But I didn’t You thought I’d ring the sun the super But I shouldn’t You thought I’d unlock the beehive But I wouldn’t You thought I’d sing the dirge But I couldn’t You thought I’d cook the rabbit And I hadn’t You thought I’d come back that day And I didn’t You thought I’d tend the flowers But I couldn’t You thought I’d turn the lock But I hadn’t You thought I’d open the door See you But I couldn’t You thought I’d lay down But I couldn’t It kills me still I couldn’t I couldn’t — Dorothea Lasky
6. Our Many Never Endings
You entered the bedroom and fell to your knees. I wait the rest of my life to hear you say, I made a mistake. Inside my chest, a mangle. Inside yours, a deflating balloon. You took the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, the dish rack and left me some lint, an iron to scorch shirts, one chipped plate. I would like to say at least we perfected entrances and exits, like professional stage actors honing their craft, but even that’s a fantasy. Mostly on TV the lions ate the hyenas but sometimes the hyenas formed a posse, and tore a lion up. Occasionally you came in out of the rain and I was glad to have you. — Courtney Queeney
7. Disappearing Love
What happened to our love? It used to be so bright Loving, laughing, caring Then soon caught the night You were my one and only love Cared for you too much Then something happened And slept with that man You deceived me I never felt so desperate But I try to forgive you now And try not to think about before I love you so much It just hurts to ponder now Everything I have Is because of you Everything I bought Was because of you I just love you so much I’m scared to lose you — Gary R. Hess
Short Breakup Poems
Sometimes, silence speaks more than words, and only a few sentences clear thoughts that are hidden in the heart. Feel inspired to convey sad feelings by reading short breakup poems.
8. The Fist
This fist clenched round my heart loosens a little, and I gasp brightness; but it tightens again. When have I ever not loved the pain of love? But this has moved past love to mania. This has the strong clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason, before plunging howling into the abyss. Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live. — Derek Walcott
9. Never Give All the Heart
Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost. • William Butler Yeats
10. A Winter’s Tale
Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow, And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge; Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge. I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky; But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh. Why does she come so promptly, when she must know That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell; The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow – Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell? — D.H. Lawrence
11. I Loved You…
I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul The former love has never gone away, But let it not recall to you my dole; I wish not sadden you in any way. I loved you silently, without hope, fully, In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain; I loved you so tenderly and truly, As let you else be loved by any man. — Aleksander Pushkin
12. Sonnet 139
O, call not me to justify the wrong That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue; Use power with power, and slay me not by art. Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight, Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside; What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might Is more than my o’erpressed defense can bide? Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows Her pretty looks have been mine enemies; And therefore from my face she turns my foes, That they elsewhere might dart their injuries— Yet do not so; but since I am near slain, Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain. — William Shakespeare
13. Proud Of My Broken Heart
Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it, Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee, Proud of my night, since thou with moons dost slake it, Not to partake thy passion, my humility. Thou can’st not boast, like Jesus, drunken without companion Was the strong cup of anguish brewed for the Nazarene Thou can’st not pierce tradition with the peerless puncture, See! I usurped thy crucifix to honor mine! — Emily Dickenson
14. Lost Love
I loved you more than I have ever known Those starry eyes Those tender lips You made my heart melt Then boil into a roaring fire I now know What my eyes could not see You are the only one that is for me Many nights those tears flew Being myself without anyone Anyone to care about the thoughts Looking at the sky and knowing Many mistakes I had Many mistakes I have had. — Gary R. Hess
Sad Breakup Poems
Everything seems lost when a heart breaks in a relationship. Sad breakup poems best describe the feelings of a broken heart.
15. Heavy
That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it –books, bricks, grief – it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed? Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth? How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply? — Mary Oliver
16. Breakup
And cigarettes and bad decisions stained into bedsheets A good idea gone rogue in a moment by the chase and retreat Words bitten off before they emerge and a sudden sense of regret The ins and outs and turns and twists confined to breakup. What feels good can’t hurt you until its not good anymore Reality doesn’t touch the bedroom until someone opens the door Grasping to skin like it’s what we had and reluctantly letting go The push and pull of dumb ideas and a lack of self control. An awkward smile all the while thinking that this was a mistake A peck of a kiss, barely a touch of the lips, and sanity far too late Stains on the skin that the shower can’t wash, they’ve soaked down to bone The knowledge that gasps and quiet laughs doesn’t mean we aren’t gone. And cigarettes and bad decisions stained into bedsheets A good idea gone rogue in a moment by the chase and retreat Words bitten off before they emerge and a sudden sense of regret The ins and outs and turns and twist confined to breakup. — North Carolina
17. Local News: Woman Dies in Chimney
They broke up and she, either fed up or drunk or undone, ached to get back inside. Officials surmise she climbed a ladder to his roof, removed the chimney cap and entered feet first. Long story short, she died there. Stuck. Like a tragic Santa. Struggling for days, the news explains. It was a smell that led to the discovery of her body. One neighbor speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a person could disregard so much: the damper, the flue, the smoke shelf. He can’t imagine what it was she faced. The empty garage. The locked back door. And is that a light on in the den? They show us the grass where they found her purse. And it’s not impossible to picture her standing on the patio — abandoned — the mind turning obscene, all hopes pinned on refastening the snap. Then spotting the bricks rising above the roof and at first believing and then knowing, sun flashing its god-blinding light behind it, that the chimney was the way. — Kristin Tracy
18. It Hurt More
They may remember my breakup because it kept coming up. Kept coming back. Some may think that my breakup was the thing that hurt the most last year. It wasn’t. It hurt more to get my heart broken by somebody else. It hurt more that I had to see her around every time I was around my friends. It hurt that her name came up everywhere I went, as obscure as it was. It hurt more that my fondest memories of last year weren’t with my former love, but with her. It hurt more that I considered my masterpiece of a song to be one about her, and not about my former love. It hurt more that gazing into her eyes I saw a myriad of puzzles to be solved and a seemingly endless, impossible maze that I wanted to travel in, but never got to. It hurt more that I bottled these feelings in because I was in a relationship. It hurt more, the nights I kept up, thinking about what if I gave it just a little more time. It hurt more to think that maybe I made the wrong decision about who I loved. It hurt more to rush into love like I did, and miss out on the one thing that may have been better. It hurt more never to see her again. It hurt more to forget her smile than my former love. It hurt more that her laugh was one of the most beautiful sounds that I’ve forgotten. It hurt more that I stayed up all night thinking more about her than my former love. It hurt more to know maybe I fell in love with her more than I did my former love. It hurt more to think about how much it must have hurt my former love to find out. It hurt more to think how much I took from my former love, and how I threw her away in the end. It hurt more to use the word threw away instead of broke up in that last sentence. It hurt more that maybe a part of me still wishes things went differently It hurt more to feel that wave of anguish to know she didn’t love me back It hurt more to feel that feeling of defeat to think I tried so hard It hurt more to feel nothing for my former love, and how guilty I should have felt but didn’t. It hurt more to realize though, that through all of it, I wasn’t blameless. I had fault. It hurt more than a thousand papercuts, cutting away, slowly at me. Taking bit by bit of myself. It hurts most that my break up didn’t hurt me at all. It was her breaking my heart that hurt the most. It stings now to know That there’s a part of me that may still love her, wondering if she loved me back. But now I’ll never know. — Soulace
19. Red Ghazal
I’ve noticed after a few sips of tea, the tip of her tongue, thin and red with heat, quickens when she describes her cuts and bruises—deep violets and red. The little girl I baby-sit, hair orange and wild, sits splayed and upside down on a couch, insists her giant book of dinosaurs is the only one she’ll ever read. The night before I left him, I could not sleep, my eyes fixed on the freckles of his shoulder, the glow of the clock, my chest heavy with dread. Scientists say they’ll force a rabbit to a bird, a jellyfish with a snake, even though the pairs clearly do not mix. Some things are not meant to be bred. I almost forgot the weight of a man sitting beside me in bed sheets crumpled around our waists, both of us with magazines, laughing at the thing he just read. He was so charming—pointed out planets, ghost galaxies, an ellipsis of ants on the wall. And when he kissed me goodnight, my neck reddened. I’m terrible at cards. Friends huddle in for Euchre, Hearts—beg me to play with them. When it’s obvious I can clearly win with a black card, I select a red. I throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket, but my aim is no good. The floor is scattered with fire hazards, declarations unread. —Aimee Nezhukumatathil
20. Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another
All my stories are about being left, all yours about leaving. So we should have known. Should have known to leave well enough alone; we knew, and we didn’t. You said let’s put our cards on the table, your card was your body, the table my bed, where we didn’t get till 4 am, so tired from wanting what we shouldn’t that when we finally found our heads, we’d lost our minds. Love, I wanted to call you so fast. But so slow you could taste each letter licked into your particular and rose-like ear. L, love, for let’s wait. O, for oh no, let’s not. V for the precious v between your deep breasts (and the virtue of your fingers in the voluptuous center of me.) Okay, E for enough. Dawn broke, or shattered. Once we’ve made the promises, it’s hard to add the prefix if. . . . But not so wrong to try. That means taking a lot of walks, which neither of us is good at, for different reasons, and nights up till 2 arguing whose reasons are better. Time and numbers count a lot in this. 13 years my marriage. 5 years you my friend. 4th of July weekend when something that begins in mist, by mistake (whose?), means too much has to end. I think we need an abacus to get our love on course, and one of us to oil the shining rods so we can keep the crazy beads clicking, clicking. It wasn’t a question of a perfect fit. Theoretically, it should be enough to say I left a man for a woman (90% of the world is content to leave it at that. Oh, lazy world) and when the woman lost her nerve, I left for greater concerns: when words like autonomy were useful, I used them, I confess. So I get what I deserve: a studio apartment he paid the rent on; bookshelves up to the ceiling she drove the screws for. And a skylight I sleep alone beneath, and two shiny quarters in my pocket to call one, then the other, or to call one twice. Once, twice, I threatened to leave him— remember? Now that I’ve done it, he says he doesn’t. I’m in a phonebooth at the corner of Bank and Greenwich; not a booth, exactly, but two sheets of glass to shiver between. This is called being street-smart: dialing a number that you know won’t be answered, but the message you leave leaves proof that you tried. And this, my two dearly beloveds, is this called hedging your bets? I fish out my other coin, turn it over in my fingers, press it into the slot. Hold it there. Let it drop. — Jan Heller Levi
Goodbye Break Up Poems
Goodbye poem for the lover, who was dishonest, disloyal, and betrayed true feelings of love. They never knew how serious you were about the relationship. At the end, when everything’s so numb, it’s better to say goodbye.
21. What my Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more. — Edna St. Vincent Millay
22. Movement Song
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck moving away from me beyond anger or failure your face in the evening schools of longing through mornings of wish and ripen we were always saying goodbye in the blood in the bone over coffee before dashing for elevators going in opposite directions without goodbyes. Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof as the maker of legends nor as a trap door to that world where black and white clericals hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh and now there is someone to speak for them moving away from me into tomorrows morning of wish and ripen your goodbye is a promise of lightning in the last angels hand unwelcome and warning the sands have run out against us we were rewarded by journeys away from each other into desire into mornings alone where excuse and endurance mingle conceiving decision. Do not remember me as disaster nor as the keeper of secrets I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars watching you move slowly out of my bed saying we cannot waste time only ourselves. — Audre Lorde
23. I Wanted To Make Myself Like The Ravine
I wanted to make myself like the ravine so that all good things would flow into me. Because the ravine is lowly, it receives an abundance. This sounds wonderful to everyone who suffers from lacking, but consider, too, that a ravine keeps nothing out: in flows a peach with only one bite taken out of it, but in flows, too, the body of a stiff mouse half cooked by the heat of the stove it was toughening under. I have an easygoing way about me. I’ve been an inviting host — meaning to, not meaning to. Oops — he’s approaching with his tongue already out and moving. Analyze the risks of becoming a ravine. Compare those with the risks of becoming a well with a well-bolted lid. Which I’d prefer depends largely on which kinds of animals were inside me when the lid went on and how likely they’d be to enjoy the water, vs. drown, freeze, or starve. The lesson: close yourself off at exactly the right time. On the day that you wake up under some yellow curtains with a smile on your face, lock the door. Live out your days untroubled like that. — Hannah Gamble
24. Time Lost
Wasting a lifetime Trying to find love Nothing happens No hope, no girl Suddenly see her But ten years before Can’t do anything Used to be friends, nothing more Now realized affection Can go no further Lost a lifetime And lost desire Try to forget But can’t Try to die But don’t Mind suddenly gone No end is near Nothing to do now But go on. — Gary R. Hess
25. Pushed Away With Tears
“I’m not good enough for you” he said. With tears in his eyes. “you put to much pressure on me, I need to live my life.” How horrible I felt, So scared and small. I loved him for him. I felt so stupid and alone. “I’m giving up now, please try to understand” “I loved you once but Never again.” I wanted to cry But tears wouldn’t help. “Please don’t leave me” I said. Falling to my knees, “I’m sorry for my mistake, I’m sorry for everything!” As the noise slowly died Silence sipped in. I could hear his foot steps, Gently walk away. “He’s gone..” I said, I pushed him away. — Elizabeth McCrorie
26. I Don’t Miss It
But sometimes I forget where I am, Imagine myself inside that life again. Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps, Or more likely colorless light Filtering its way through shapeless cloud. And when I begin to believe I haven’t left, The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke Climbing the walls while the hours fall. Straining against the noise of traffic, music, Anything alive, to catch your key in the door. And that scamper of feeling in my chest, As if the day, the night, wherever it is I am by then, has been only a whir Of something other than waiting. We hear so much about what love feels like. Right now, today, with the rain outside, And leaves that want as much as I do to believe In May, in seasons that come when called, It’s impossible not to want To walk into the next room and let you Run your hands down the sides of my legs, Knowing perfectly well what they know. — Tracky K. Smith
