Spoken Word: Jasmine Mans Performing “Dear Ex-lover”

Jasmine Mans is another favorite poet of mine and I think her poem "Dear Ex-lover" has the best chosen words anyone would like to say to their ex lover. Favorite quote: "Dear ex lover I’ll tell her never regret loving in permanent ink and that scars only give your stretch marks something to gossip about and that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins lost in the pits of open roads and hollow chests."

Dear ex lover. I promise I’ll stop chasing your memory in my dreams. I’ll stop bring your name up over cups of coffee, muffins and loneliness. I will marry a man and I will lay my heart on his chest like red roses on mahogany caskets. And I’ll have his daughter, and she’ll have eyes reminding me that God, God still believes in second chances.


And if she ever decided to date a woman I’ll love bravery, down, down her spine. I’ll be reminded of all the times that we loved like there were expiration dates tattooed on our inner thighs,  I’ll tell her to watch out for women whose silhouettes remind you of road blocks. To run when you kiss that skin that reminds you of dead ends and if she ever comes home with eyelids like cracking levies, bruised kneecaps and a heart filled with question marks I’ll hold her like my mother never held me.


I’ll clasp her face in my palms like the new testament on judgement day. I’ll tell her that love is the passion that allows you to do the right thing, that no woman can play cloister to a half empty heart. Dear ex-lover. If my daughter ever feels like she’s alone, like she is not a hand me down fabric pulled from the depths of her mommy’s closets I’ll remember your name and I’ll mumble it under my breath and when she asks me what did I say? I’ll tell her, That I know what it’s like to drive a woman out of a cold war then being too warm to clean up the battle field, that it is made of you, I’ll tell her, That your heart beats sound like gun shots tripping over battered cement and that I know what it’s like to want somebody to remember you.


But that no woman can play cloister to a half empty heart and that apologies are like oxygen masks on hijacked planes. Forgive yourself before you dare forgive the person lying next to you.

Dear ex lover I’ll tell her never regret loving in permanent ink and that scars only give your stretch marks something to gossip about and that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins lost in the pits of open roads and hollow chests.


Dear ex-lover, if my daughter ever comes home and walks in my house like shattering glass and is too prideful and embarrassed to run in her mommy’s arms I’ll pray that she has friends with hearts filled with thousands of fireflies. Who are not too cool to pray with her. Who would tell her to stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, to find God in this here darkness.



Dear ex lover if my daughter ever wants to forget everything. If she ever wants to write off true love as simply and experiment I won’t allow her to make the same mistakes her mother made, I’ll tell her about you. I’ll tell her that we laughed together. That we cried. That we fought like women who love women who love people that didn’t love us. That, that we hurt. Like c-sections birthing dead babies. That we smiled. Like our smiles were the only ones that mattered in this world.



Dear ex lover I hope my daughter never knows what a goodbye kiss feels like. That she never knows what I’ll see you later really means.  That she never memorizes the dial tone of a last conversation because a broken heart, a broken heart really feels like poison butterflies taking their last flutters in the pit of your stomach.



I hope my daughter never bares her soul at some poetry showcase with her first love sitting in the audience knowing, that the hands she’ll use to applaud her will be the same hands that she’ll never be able to hold again.

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