My heart.

I took my feet off the pedals but I was cranking them so hard, they’re still whirring. I can’t build up the velocity for my body to catch up with my heart. It’s spinning out of my chest. It’s spinning upward and away and I’ll never catch it. I’ll never catch it.

Why can’t my heart just float out, almost out, but always within grasp like theirs do? They don’t understand why I spin so hard, why I always look exhausted and not happy and floaty. It got away again. And I just have to wait for it to come back. It’s sad, the waiting.

They judge me because I don’t have a heart. Sometimes it feels like it’s running away when it goes. At first it’s so happy and so beating and so bright. Painfully bright and then beating so hard and it can’t be contained and it just… it just… goes. I can’t hold on.

And here he comes, to stand there and smile. His heart is there too. He looks happy and peaceful and he’s there and his heart. His heart is there too.

He’s raining on me with his words again. Like the mountainside and the tiny little flowers that grow against the rock. Only the gentlest of rain should fall on them. And his words are rain like that.

My wheels have stopped their spinning. In the stillness, I can hear myself breathing and my heart. My heart. My heart is here too.

 

Your Likeness (1999)

Oh wretched matrimonious bird why sang that song to lure
of sweet two-peace and harmony and love’s eternity

eternity has scuffed and worn my dancing slippers dead
broken links, the chains of love lay scattered in my bed

my bed of roses, thorny now and only red with blood
of broken hearted promises and scarlet letter’s flood

floods of fears are soaking through my pillowcases now
blackening stains of vanity, the vain belief that beauty rightly brings love back to me

back to me love cannot bring its song of deafening feather lightness
for muted matrimonious fowl, I’m caged within
your likeness