Blue Suede Shoes

Has anyone escaped heartbreak lately?

It’s been the unwanted dinner, breakfast, and lunch guest,

even staying for a midnight snack.

It’s crept into happy hour 

to turn the corners of our mouths down,

and cheerlead our tears to victory on the ride home.

Some days I wonder if we are all in a dream.

Lucid and confused, we pace

back and forth from gym to work to home.

Each tragic new story,

an obsessed stalker following us,

through algorithms and album covers,

from memes to museums.

Heartbreak used to be fewer and farther between.

Before talk of dictatorship and genocide,

we chanted yes we can

and believed that humanity

just might be heading in the right direction.

We disagreed without pistols.

Finger guns reserved for cheesy jokes.

And Mother Earth smiled at us sweetly from her sweaty hospital bed

as we promised to do better,

Dreaming up inventions to cool her. 

We even swore that love had no bounds or genders,

and I do’s were said under technicolor rainbows.

As the Earth pirouettes one more time around the sun,

can we slip out of our combat boots,

back into our blue suede shoes,

grasp each other’s hands,

and dance for a while

to the song of one million tiny sewing machines

stitching our hearts back together?