Your heart shatters
like a plate of china
smashed against
a grungy tile floor.

Pieces scatter like spiders,
impossible to retrieve,
impossible to rebuild,
impossible to contemplate.

Your heart is bruised, bleeding
drops of unrequited love.
The viscera of your body
tighten like a noose. You could slide

your head into it, if you choose,
but what would be the use? Love flees
like deer bounding in a forest.
You are too broken to give chase.

Yet the heart yearns
for completeness;
it is the foundation
of all desire.

Like a baby's cry
in the night, the heart wails,
begging to be heard. Echoes
permeate the dampened air.

So listen: You must breed
a new heart, with new desires,
tightening it together with
a titanium plate. This wound

will not be opened again,
though it aches and aches
in your jaded memory.
Let poetry be your guide; its love

is eternal; it seeks the ideal;
it comforts the sorrowful;
it inspires the helpless mind.
It raises you above the broken pieces

of existence. You have the choice:
Live or die, wallow in remorse,
or claw your way out of your battered shell.
You can decide now: Let poetry be your new heart.

It will not bleed.