STARLESS EYES

Like I've Always Done

I left a trail of hearts in my wake wherever I went, call it chaotic, call it maniacal, call it tantamount to bloodthirsty

Perhaps it was - you once said my heart was a body of water, reflective like a mirror - but tell me if I told you

I left them like plastic littered by the shore - like bystanders watching whales breach and taking pictures of their dying breaths before calling it a tragedy and shrugging off the weight of the carcasses as one would a buzzing bee

I left them in your pockets

The heart of a girl from kindergarten
She would hug me till my skin was sticky and she still somehow always found a way to smear leftover lollipop from her mouth to my cheek
She called me a kitten for the days when I would scratch and the days when I was all fun and smiles
The day before she moved she took my hands and held them to her chest and told me i had the softest fur any kitten she'd known had
I told her kittens were meant to be bloodied spots on fast moving highways

The heart of a boy from freshman year of high school
Who would walk me to math class every day like clockwork, his smiles hidden behind red faced crushes and a stuttering problem I thought I was endearing
Slowly I earned his trust and his eyes would inch by inch - sometimes weeks inter-lapping like waves eroding at stones - move up from the desk to my eyes
On Valentine's Day as we walked to class I told him he should be proud that he was able to talk to me without going redder than the innards of his trembling heart, he told me he would be prouder to call me his girlfriend
I laughed as I told him he should find a girl who would be proud to have him as anything

There was also the heart of the Catholic girl with curly dark hair and skin softer than cocoa butter who wrapped her rosary thrice around my neck and made me pray to her God every Friday as she whispered every sin she wanted to enact on me
I was only eight at the time
I had her heart without wanting it

I filled your pockets with hearts over hearts - pumping bloodied organs that just refused to stop weighing on my chest like an anchor does, like the iceberg did to the great Titanic - and when I ran I chucked them at the floor.
A trail of hearts I told you I had collected, a cluster of petrified wooden hearts and broken hearts and dipped in tears hearts all beating as if electrocuted into living by the exploding of my heart.

If I told you all this, if I showed you that while holding the hearts of my victims I could still run without jostling a heart to the floor - would you see what polluted water my heart was? The cartilage floating above it and the reflections of broken-hearted faces drifting in and out of shore.

If I did this, would you stop leaving voicemails that make me cry? Because my heart might be polluted but your firework filled sky pierces my waves like UV rays.