Some Hearts

 

Everything was something else, once,
but you burned it down, one match
in that too-dry house,
that kindling-no man’s land
where you had become a ghost,
and with that impossible heat,
everything changed,
crumbled like gingerbread,
until everything was smoke
and memory,
and you left your shoes
right where the door used to be,
because you were never going back,
and you are always leaving things behind,
but you needed to make new memories.

You pulled your heart
from its harbor—that bloody mess
of howling—and you gave it
to a girl you thought was the moon,
and the whole world spun wide
and wild, and you could taste
freedom in her name
every time you whispered
in her ear—
but you forgot that the moon is fickle,
and she changes
without mercy,
and everything goes dark
eventually.

Sometimes, love snaps your heart
like a bone, and those fingers
that used to shiver across your skin
suddenly leave you wanting,
aching, and your heart is howling again
but out of absence,
burning with mourning
until you don’t what day it is,
and you don’t even care,
but it gets better—
eventually.

And then here is a fey girl
of chaos, ripe as sunlight
and messy as a pomegranate,
sweet but not without difficulty,
her soul a song
made of the impossible,
with scars no one can trace
with a hand, but that burn
like sigils in the dark
when no one is looking,
and yet, she gives you laughter,
and meets you at the crossroad
full of old memories,
waiting without hesitation,
and there’s a fire in her mouth,
while yours holds the ocean,
and she’s drowned before
so she knows what might happen—
but some hearts
always know where they’re going.

Everything was something else, once,
but you cannot measure the past
by the smell of its ashes,
and you cannot train your heart
not to howl, wolf-wild
it once lived for its solitude,
but that’s a mouth keen on starving,
and every instinct
dwells in passion,
a sharp spark of stars
that trip their way across the sky,
an offering
of pure light,
when the dark
would overtake you.