synesthesiology

"Anyone worth knowing breaks once.
Once.
No shame, no foul if you survive it."

what we are not told is that it is never a clean break.
it can never be stitched up
in the way that a surgeon with impeccable attention to detail
weaves the stitches
in and out, and over and under.
I cannot hide this scar you left when you drove the knife right into my chest
and twisted,
reversing the flow of blood through the heart.
I ask people to touch it, can they feel my heart beating beneath it?

My heart.
I don't wear it so much on my sleeve as I encase myself in it.
I am pulsing and throbbing, squeezing every breath out of life.
They hold me up at school assemblies.
This is your heart, and the mitral valve opens and closes,
and if you pay close enough attention you can see my soul tumble out.

I have tried to harden myself, toughen myself up
like the nicotine-hardened heart of the life-long smoker.
I gave up smoking a long time ago,
and all of that aside, people break from yearning, too.

In this room, right now, I can feel all of us
beating in perfect time.
While my mother always told me that I was too sensitive,
needed to learn to
laugh at myself,
toughen up &
grow a thicker skin,
I want no part in any of that.
The electricity that runs right through me
when I don't clear the person passing me in the stairwell
is what keeps me alive.

This only breaks you once.
Once.
Somewhere in breaking, you learn that if you want to be
someone who is trusted,
you need to be someone who trusts.

Your eyes are so empty.

Hold me tightly. Trace this scar in my chest.

It means I am still alive.