I dissected a heart in biology
no one understood what it meant to me,
but it was because I'd never held one, before, myself.

Scouring bleach and formaldehyde
can never disguise the sickly sweet beat of butterflies
that lies, oh so quietly, on the shelf.

I had one too, some time ago,
and I've tossed pennies and blown for wishes,
but somehow now I've made my peace
with never getting it back

I sat on a playground of chlorine stained rocks,
swinging my legs, wearing mismatched socks.
Golden waves of grain swept before my eyes,
it slipped out of my grasp as I blindly wept.
it did not break, but was lost.

A second time, another demise:
a grocery store on roland and thirty-sixth,
I was hypnotized by spoken laughter,
green eyes held it and called me legend
but then forgot it, laying on the shelf.

On the shelf I sat for mere hours,
but could not stand thinking of none,
So I fell in love and waited for the ends of the earth,
searching for someone to tie myself to.
A hand reached for lemon and galaxy
So I soured my smile and sparkled my eyes,
but my gravity broke, my star went out,
while my strings were taut and devout.
and _ hands saw beyond my light and reached out to me,
with scissors sliced away my woven web from their hands,
and it dropped to the floor, misled.

After this I gave up,
gathered the pieces and strings,
and hammered and nailed them with my cut apart love.
But one day in the library, I drew a grapevine,
and its tendrils and swishes caught my fingers,
it turned toward the sky, grew an upturned nose,
and its grapes melted into dark brown eyes.
I rushed to the stairs to tape up my chest,
for my heart was, again, bleeding out.