37 Pieces

My heart is broken into 37 pieces.

Only one of these belongs to you.

Something unseen, only felt

crept like some kind of devil

in the night, crushed me 

with a weight of talon-ed feet,

my back broken in two

I lay across the rocks,

while the dark sucked out the light,

that was the first time I died.

My blood

red rivers cut in two,

I took the razor 

from the shelf

locked the door

shut them out,

sang a soothing lullaby

to myself in the mirror, 

the second time.

Some kind of lightning bolt, 

a smothering, a second sight

that tore a hole right through

and what was left was my

three-chambered heart,

for a moment it stopped.

My heart had split,

and split again, 

not because of you.

I threw a stone

across the lake, it did

not skip, but only sank

instead, I counted four ripples

as my heart hit the bottom.

A drum for a breast

I beat out a song,

sorrowful and sweet,

drew the curtains in

so that I could not see,

but a breeze blew 

bellows from a ship

out to sea, filling my skin

with fire that I could not

put out, five flames licked

at my scorched heart.

You came through

like a god-damn hurricane

swept me up,

your lips traced

a spiral along my spine,

you left your teeth marks

on my neck, your fingers'

prints on my thighs,

then set me down,

like a force of nature

you never even turned around.

Number six belongs to you,

I saw it in your pocket

as you walked out the door.

I flipped the deadbolt,

boarded up the windows,

hung a sign,

"temporarily out of order."

Look in the tool shed

for a rusty key, a hammer,

a wrench, an axe, 

chop though these

tough sinews of my 

seven-part heart.

A boulder fell from the sky

landed with a heavy sigh

upon my heart, pulverized, 

crushed in tiny bits

shards of wet glass and rock

slivers of what I used to be

tied together with string

and carried over my shoulder.

The last time I died, I stepped out

and fell into it, you weren't there.

That time, I held out my arms

to try to feel the sides,

they just weren't where they 

should have been, nothing felt, 

nothing to hold to, and so 

the bottom came fast and hard.

I died on the sharp edges 

that lay on the bottom

of myself, so I learned to 

soften myself, to round those 

jagged rough parts of me, 

to curve, to bring it all in, 

to cave until I caved again,

and inside that safety,

that darkness, I found me

and 37 pieces of my heart,

which I collected and 

created anew out of paper, glue, 

three singing swallows,

my deepest shades of blue, 

and left it to dry

on the windowsill.