Today at the store,
I bought a quarter pound of smoked heartbreak that I had,
Recently lost sometime while sweeping things under the rug.
Handed over a credit card for something I am well aware people are ready to give away for free.
The cashier had asked me if I wanted a receipt,
Nudged it towards me in hopes tommorow I’d come back to exchange heartbreak for poetry
As always,
But I said no.
Because lately,
I haven’t been able to tell the difference between the two.
Lately,
I’ve been choreographing sentences ending in the poses of question marks wearing hunched backs that remind me more of the spines of blades.
As if I can hear them dancing to a tune of ink that is a bit too dark red to be the kind that fixes mistakes,
Not the type my teacher wrote in on my test when she questioned why I don't know how to correctly shade in the circles for any of my answers,
Why they’re either left blank or my hands started stuttering.
The cashier put the receipt into the bag anyway,
And there is nothing left to say.
The truth is we do this just about every other day.
All the days in between,
I’m left to walk aimlessly on the uncharted territories of notebooks,
Waiting to trip over flowers,
And only take the time to study their roots,
I’ve spent more time pulling things out of the ground rather than smelling them.
And each time I pose another question,
I can feel my heart hammering away at itself.
Like lately i’ve been wondering,
What does it feel like to have a favorite flower?
I’ve been writing lists of all the things I might be able to relate it with,
Like knowing the smell of a fire from a mile away.
Till I realize,
I must not know what fire smells like,
If I've spent all my time running from it,
I only know its after taste
Each time I swallow myself down after eating myself away.
Today at the store,
I handed over a credit card for something I am well aware people are ready to give away for free,
But lately,
I’ve been feeling the need to,
Pay a price for this heart that just,
Breaks itself.