Notes From the Margins

Pizza & Trauma Spring 2025 Poem 7

This is work done by the Pizza and Trauma Writing Group, Spring 2025  - A writing group within the Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center of Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU)

We met every Friday during the Spring semester 2025 to eat Pizza together and write, both separately and together, culminating in an extemporaneous group poem. Although the membership varied every week, the group began to write as a group whose voice became one as the semester progressed.

The following ten poems are the poems of this group. Thank you, Pizza and Trauma Writing Group for showing up for the group and for yourself.

Breaking up is so difficult, even if you’re the one who wants it. We fall in love, we have so many hopes. We fail at communication at times: we fail to hear another person and understand what they mean. They fail to understand us as well.

But somehow the heart is a resilient organ. The heart feels so deeply.  When we meet someone our hearts are so full. We have so many hopes and dreams. When those dreams fall apart our hearts ache. We may in fact feel so devastated that we fear we will never get over it, never feel okay again, never love again. We go through the process. We ache, yet somehow we heal. We go on. We have hope.

Poem 7

Broken hearted

It’s hard to get my heart started

To start all over again, so startled

If every closed door I’ve encountered has led me to day,

I hope I’m not afraid the next time.