How can it be that I can feel every beat of my heart resonating through me like church bells and still feel like there's an empty hole where my heart should be? I'm hollow except for the pain, the phantom pain like that of an amputee clutching a shattered limb and stretching fingers that will only ever again touch in his mind. The heart that you took with you when you left me still pumps and stings but won't feel anything real ever again. And I'm proud. Proud of how I lost my heart to you in the heat of battle, the heat of passion. I'll tell war stories to the neighborhood kids sitting on my front porch and I'll show them the scars from where you cut out my heart. And then at night I'll open my window and look up at the moon, I'll look up at the same moon that you see and I'll smile because somewhere out there you have my heart on your shelf, a trophy of your first conquest. And though I've lost the war I revel in the fact that I was important enough for you to conquer, that I was enough of a challenge to be your first triumph. I can only hope that when you tell your war stories the story of your first win will be as glorious as the story of my final defeat.