Jagged

Written in response to:

https://onewomansquest.org/2020/05/11/vjs-weekly-challenge-95-bits-and-pieces/

Pieces broke away,
pebbles and stones
chipped from a boulder.
The edge of a pane of glass
broken off, no longer smoothly square,
but rough ridged like a broken thumb nail,
begging to be filed away.

Pieces broken away,
missing in wordlessness,
cannot be found.
Jig saw together the rest,
glue, duct tape,
what is left,
never to imitate new, unbroken.

Broken, hollowed parts,
make for an ever incomplete,
an always abyss
to fall headlong into,
always a scratchy roughness to scrape
a knee, an elbow, a hand.
Always a sharp edge to slice open
an abdomen, an arm, a femoral artery, a throat.

No. No. No.
Everything, everything
at once, best kept at arm’s length.
Never can such wounds be allowed
in the here,
in the now.

Where the Heart Is

Image from the openingbelle.com
Written in response to https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2020/05/09/weekend-writing-prompt-156-home/

Isn’t home where the heart is?
Or where you hang your hat?

My heart, well, I don’t know.
I seem to have misplaced it
Somewhere along the way.
I think I just mistreated it
And it decided to run away.

Didn’t treat it tenderly–
Let it get bruised,
Broken, bashed about.
So, it up and decided
It was time to go.
It bought a one-way ticket
On a now defunct airline
And went to catch the sun
On some tropical beach.

But that’s what happens
When you carelessly
Fling your heart around.
It develops shadows,
Misses beats,
Valves leak.
Then it gets pissed off,
runs away,
and home isn’t
what it
used to be.