Bury the heart
in the damp dirt
where the ants can crawl around the hill,
letting their fangs settle in,
swarming,
festering in the pavement.
There lays a man whose life was dedicated for one purpose:
to live for others,
to shelter in place, imagining
how the tides could change,
how the moon could rise for the west —
its pale face strutting in the wind, facing the sun’s rays.
I often wonder where that moon went, if that moon ever
existed. I thought I imagined the moon, but maybe I
did not. I thought I saw the moon when I was five,
when the I still looked up at the moon, when
my eyes still glanced upwards when I was bored.
I no longer look at the sky, wondering if the lunar kiss
would come back to grace my childhood face.
What they don’t tell you about aging, is that you lose
your plasticity. Your face becomes wrinkled, and when
you touch it, you can feel that it is different.
You are different.
You are old.
Isn’t that different?
Ruined inside; it is an easy fight from here. The
heart dipped in chocolate can drizzle its blood
on a paper napkin. What shape is the heart?
Is it the same shape a heart was when
you were five? Is it still a heart, or it
more than a heart now — the same way a child
becomes more than a child when they become
an adult?