I used to think
the heart was only a piece of
paper.
What else?
While you go through the motions,
he and him leave pencil marks.
Scrawls and doodles, just
hasty mutterings in the marginalia.
You know,
those little hearts with
those little initials
you find in little girls' maths books?
Your eyes don't stray from these scribbles,
ever, no, never,
but
you vow to yourself that one day there'll be
ink
scrawled across that paper.
Black or blue
heart-stamp.
Vivid.
And nothing else would matter anymore.
What the fairytale should really say is
once upon a day
he'll walk in and grab that sheet of
paper.
It'll disappear into his coat pocket forever.
And you won't even know it
until
that paper will crumple,
black and blue, black and blue,
out, out, out of his coat
that he's left behind in the closet.
A souvenir,
a lost cause.
That is your heart,
that is your heart.
Inspirations for this: A John Mayer song called A Face to Call Home and a conversation with a friend who was recently heart-battered because a girl wrote so hard with pencil on his heart, the paper tore. Sigh.