The box that holds my heart.

I have a photo of you & I. It's gathering dust on my dresser, face down. I picked it up a few days ago, I blew off the dust and I stared. I just stared. 

Slowly, I let myself look at you. So much taller than me. (But who isn't? Let's be honest here.) It was before my life went crazy, and I didn't know how to make it right again. I still don't know how. 

Then you disappeared, for a while.

Now you're in my life again, and I'm a mess. I'm a different girl who's just trying to pick up the pieces of her life that don't quite fit together anymore. (I don't know if they ever fit in the first place.) I'm shoving all the pieces into my box.

I feel like my world will explode on the first wrong step I take. So many cracks are in sight, it's a wonder it hasn't exploded already. 

I packed up my heart in bubble wrap, and slid it into the box that holds the crooked pieces of my life.

I'm trying to be careful. I'm trying to be cautious, carrying around the box that holds my heart, carrying it high above my head. No one can look at it. No one can open it.

It makes me wonder why I let you have it in the first place.

And why I didn't fight harder to get it back.

Here's news for you: You won't lay hands on it ever again. This time I locked it up, and I swallowed the key. You'll never see it again. (Stop asking.)


And the picture of us? It's in the box, too.
 

Obviously, I'm Jealous.

(This poem isn't actually in our book. But it makes me jealous just the same.)

Personal. by Tony Hoagland. 


Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

Poems like this make me jealous.