egghead

egghead Sep 2020

my heart

If I ever lose my heart
that will be a great tragedy
I don't mean broken
or "stolen" by love— but
If I should have to lose my heart
and replace it with another

Another, which hasn't skipped the same
lost beats
or pumped the blood that flushed
my cheeks
If I trade hearts,
for one
that hasn't been shattered
like mine
for one that has been reassembled
by someone whose mind
is not like mine despite the rush of blood
"A" positive that pulsed through valves
so like my old heart.

I don't want it,
whatever it looks like
however it works.

even if it kills me
I want to keep my heart.
the one thats been battered and bruised
the heart that I gave to people
who dropped it.

I want my heart
whose pieces I regathered
the heart I glued together
with foreign fragments

my calloused heart
rebuilt and reconfigured
beyond recognition

the heart whose patterns and textures
are so misaligned.
but the only heart
that could really be mine.

I want that heart.

Because I broke and rebuilt that heart
and for every tear
every wound
every scratch
every scar
every time someone dropped it, and it shattered
every stitch as I sewed it back together
every bandage
every brace
every patch
—that heart is much bigger now.

And those patches
those foreign fragments
are people and places
and things that I love
that took up a place in my heart
left open after every time it broke.

I couldn't glue it together the same way.
there were pieces I put in different places
over and over
because my heart had to beat differently
love differently
but love.
always.

I don't want a different heart.
I want my heart, with all its patterns, textures,
scars, and stitches. Bigger now
and more forgiving.
More capable of love and healing
and happiness.

egghead Sep 2020

scars

I have big red scars
that I burned into me,
completely by accident,
but they're the first things that you see.

and people ask me all the time
how I ever got so hurt
and I tell them with shrug
that there was plenty that was worse.

Things that never left a mark.
left me mostly unscathed
and those things that you don't see
are the scars that I forgave.

So they disappeared,
and left my skin so pale and smooth
vulnerable to the things
that would cut into me soon.

I wish that I could show you
all the things that hurt me most
but they dug caves within my head
and they whisper around like ghosts.

So when you meet me
and I let you shake my hand
and you see the purple, splotches
the pain I did withstand

Don't ask about the scars
on the surface that you see
don't ask at all
Smile and leave me be.

egghead Sep 2020

wash your face

Should you wash your face from crying?
Someone told me tears are drying.
So, I told you I was fine, still lying.
how I could I be?
when we cannot keep our loves from dying

egghead Sep 2020

periwinkle

I have daydreamed
love-drunk off foreign tongues
and felt that heat off hands which held fast
and unfamiliar.

I have waded in that.
A dizzying, dissimilar daze,
and I have been ashamed
to love a world and want to leave it
all in one kiss. One kiss
that is and wasn't and can't be

but someone roams the wisteria laden halls
and daydreams drunk in periwinkle
and she—is me.

And while I wile away my sleeping days
under golden archways, I think of you
...and you too.

egghead Jan 2020

The Drive Home (take 1)

When I think of the drive home
I hardly remember a thing.
Just the time
and the wide open space,
the way my heart ached.

The sky was light that day,
which to me seemed appropriate.
My outsides never matched insides.

See, I remember my insides
a tangle of intestines
a wild thrumming heart that beat
and bruised my insides
my insides
inside
You. Could never let me inside.

Outside we were a fissure.
But me—my insides
soaked in sun, drenched in love,
dry to the bone
and your outsides, I—inside
a steel safe just beneath
the skin

When I think of the drive home,
I hardly remember a thing.

egghead Oct 2019

Everything

If I ever learn to whisper with the wind
I should hope to never unlearn that.
So, when I tell my secrets
they will fly far away
and belong to the fickle tempest
that calls on clouds.

If I ever learn the language of falling snow
I will sing to the snowflakes
and tell them stories of spring
so perhaps, melting
will not seem so damning.

If I ever learn to capture the freedom
of the dark.
I should hope I let it go.
that I swallow my fear and taste the same
freedom without trapping it.

One day, I dearly hope:
I will experience heat
bitter cold, encasing breeze
impossible, billowing darkness
and light.
and not hold onto them and miss
the songs of the things I have yet to feel.

If I ever learn all the
miraculous, painful– delicate intricacies
of what it means, not to be human
but to be alive. I should hope
I feel everything.