Heron Clan Reading: January 10, 2021


 

Heart Torn Symmetry


You tore my heart in half

Folded it first 

And ripped it

For symmetry.

My equally divided heart

In each of your hands

Slips slowly

To the floor

Where you stomp on it,

Jump up 

and 

down

on it,

Do a little dance

On it,

Get down tonight,

Smashing it 

Like a spent cigarette.

 

But you pick it up,

Oh my,

To flap jack it

into a

Butter churn

Where you

pulverize it

painstakingly

to butter,

Drawing it out

With a knife

You slather it on

A cracker

And eat it.


 

Construction Paper Heart


When he sat, working on a gift poem for a beloved granddaughter, when asked,

“Do you want to fall in love again?” without a hesitating moment for thoughts of his companion or with thoughts of his companion to let her know, he says in the voice that speaks poet's words, “I will never fall in love again.”
 
Her pitter pat heart practically on the plate before her, she watched in horror, the setness of his jaw, as he stared at the loving poem he wrote for his blood. Foul fingers pecking at small keyboards, correcting the lines she suggested were weak, not ever taking the exact words she displayed from her tongue, but twisted them so as to never give her claims to anything of his. His heart, his home, his soul. His life, never linked to her, never acknowledged to her, kept quiet, and for her sake, he says, and slathered his toast with buttery spread, jellied, and opulently flavored for his mouth that dissed her notion of love between them.
 

 

Was her hurt by her, was he hurt by the hers, or did she forget to say no, on occasion, even when it was always yes yes yes for her to him. Her heart still laying crimsom on the table looking like a child’s art of feathery construction paper in primary red. The jagged edges pulling apart it in a series of tears and tears, Pixar animated movements across the porcelain, China, white, logo hidden. No one would see them there. The red paper oozing to a fluid liquid state of succumb
 
 

He Said I Shared


He said I shared the color of his mother’s eyes,

And would I like to see?

A photo perhaps 

From under his bed,

A walk to the shelf 

For an album of dust?

Perhaps. 

No, the eye that was made for 

And worn by, the her

That bore him.

The Italian side, 

of brown eyes

Gone to hazel with age.

The one lost in an accident

Found in her son’s closet

Decades and eons later,

Following her demise. 

 

 

I declined.


 

 

 

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