Mosaic Heart

I think in poetry, each notion a line

from an unknown poem,

one I haven’t written,

one I never will.

 

My heart does what it can

to piece them together,

but the task is impossible.

Each fragment is jagged and broken,

drawing blood between caresses.

 

I swim in those rivers,

flowing crimson.

 

Below the waves, I meet myself.

I meet my mom, kissing my forehead,

closing the storybook on page 8.

 

I come from distant places,

fragile homes that change with the seasons.

I blink and they are gone, I am here.

Where are you?

 

I come from the gasoline soaked

teddy bear sprawled in the gutter,

smiling stitches forever.

I come from clue number 67 down,

scribbled out and splattered with the morning decaf.

 

I come from paper kites, folded in the wind

on a boisterous Monday in March,

trampled by size 3 Nikes. I come from

Sunday streets seen from the backseat,

the window cranked down,

with Midwest sunshine kissing haystacks.

 

You smile at me,

just a knowing glimpse,

your bronze hair a ballerina,

bouncing on balls, breathing,

buoyant, heavenly.

 

I could tumble through red forever.

If I surface, you’ll fade away again.

My heart, you see, is shattered, yes.

 

But the incomplete pieces are memories,

and you hold them together.

You make me a cathedral,

radiant with mismatched glass.

There’s beauty in the broken.

Reviews

[Bryndis]

I often think of pain as necessary to love. Here you wrote beautifully what hurt comes with this strange emotion of love--and, funny enough, I love it. It skips around like a broken memory, which, hey, that's how human minds work. I think it's incredibly hard to rightly describe this phenomena, and you've gone and done it in a poem. Bravissimo to you.