STARLESS EYES

So I Told You About Her Heart

How it thumped and thumped and flew into my lap like a fish who knows it will never make it to water - like the coral reef as if succumbs to bleaching - like a hummingbird whose wings   are
      f
        a
           l
             l
               i
                 n
                    g

I closed my eyes as I told you how I'd looked at it and tried to patch its holes. How I wanted to put her on a list for heart transplants because hers seemed too fragile and I was never known for knowing how to hold glass without cracking it. I told you how I secretly put her name on the list but every time I tried to take her for the operation she would claw at my stomach and blame me for her absentee heart.

How she would SCREAM and BITE and CUT into me with words slicing as silently deadly as the scalpel. How I didn't just hold her while bleeding - while s h a k i n g - because her heart was meant to be preserved in a jar of her tears.

I told you I couldn't save my life so I wanted to save hers. I told you I'd never known the difference between being human and being mistaken for an angel with a devil's heart. I told you how I couldn't handle being forced to swallow my streams of tears because her heart was the priority.

I told you how I left her at the hospital post-surgery. How I took her old heart and hurled every remark I swallowed, every love confession I didn't understand how to reciprocate, every time I drew a boundary and it was crossed, every conversation about me turning into one about her, every time I was mistaken for an angel, every time I thought I might have clung but I never anchored.

And just like a hummingbird given a taste of honeysuckle, my heart was taking off into your hands as you said you hoped we could keep our own hearts.
Because the craters in our hearts were our own and you could not fix me nor I you. But we could warm each other until the lava in our hearts slowly began to expand so that the craters were far and in-between.

And that is one lesson I could never give her. And it was the first time I knew what it felt like to suddenly want somebody so much you want to drench yourself in honey to keep them around. This is when I began to fall in love with the pictures you created in the landscape of my heart.