The Heart Is Mine

I did not bring you my heart

In a lacquered box …

No red ribbon,

No little perfume-cloud

For your ceremonial hands.

I brought it warm.

Warm,

And stupid,

And beating its pink animal beat

Against my ribs.

Here, I said.

Here is the whole of it.

The rooms.

The rot.

The small gold rooms

Where I kept my joys

Like contraband.

You opened it.

Not opened …

You split it.

So exquisitely.

Your fingers went in

Where no fingers should go

And blood came first,

Bright little witness,

Bright little fool.

There …

I thought …

Perhaps this is love.

How obedient the heart is

When it has been starved.

• 

I waited for you

With exhaustion sitting

Like a black dog

At the foot of my bed.

Hours became bones.

My body counted them.

You saw me.

Your jaw became a locked door.

Your teeth held the word

That might have saved us.

Then …

The smile.

Oh, the smile.

A white counterfeit,

A match-head in a cellar.

And you left.

You left me that tiny fire

And I, idiot girl,

Called it morning.

• 

I brought flowers.

God, how I brought flowers.

Whole gardens

Dragged through the mud

To your door.

I loved you happiest …

That reckless weather

When your face opened

And the world, for one second,

Was not your enemy.

So I brought fragrance.

You gave me bitter leaves.

Bitter, bitter leaves—

Their green tongues

Licking the back of my throat.

I nearly vomited.

Still I said:

Perhaps medicine tastes like this.

Perhaps healing

Must first make you sick.

So I learned the taste.

I swallowed.

I swallowed.

I swallowed you.

• 

Then one day

On an ordinary road—

Nothing biblical,

Nothing grand—

I found my flowers

Under the wheels.

Petal.

Mud.

Petal.

My little offerings

Flattened into the city’s black mouth.

Their perfume

Ground into dust.

And I stopped.

I looked down.

And suddenly

I understood the lesson.

How tenderly

I had admired

What you taught the world

To crush.

• 

You could love no one.

I knew.

You were a country

With the crops burned out,

A field where every seed

Had learned to fear the rain.

Still I thought ..

Perhaps something was different.

Perhaps I felt being chosen

Because you looked at me.

Oh, the vanity of the wounded.

I wanted your locked rooms.

I wanted the machinery

Beneath your silence.

I wanted to crawl

Inside your fear

And name every broken hinge.

I thought if I understood

The architecture of your pain

I could become

The key.

But you never hid your contempt.

You catalogued me.

My face

A defect.

My clothes 

A defect.

My eyes, my hair,

My body

Little exhibits

In your museum of ugliness.

And I thanked you

For looking.

I thought you had discovered

Something secret beneath me.

You had not.

You were only measuring

What could be broken.

• 

And sometimes …

Sometimes you praised me.

Those were the worst days.

Praise from you

Was a knife

With a velvet handle.

I knew your hatred.

Hatred had become domestic.

It slept beside me.

It knew where I kept the cups.

It knew my name.

But kindness …

Kindness was a stranger

Knocking at midnight.

I did not trust it.

I had lived so long on poison

That sweetness tasted false.

So I mistook cruelty

For honesty.

I mistook pain

For intimacy.

I mistook being wounded

For being loved.

• 

Now the hatred has come out.

Not honey.

Not smoke.

A volcano.

A red mouth

Under the earth

That never died …

Only waited.

Waited for the hour

When the mountain itself

Would remember its name.

And there were warnings.

Oh yes.

They came in familiar clothes.

A glance.

A silence.

A bruise no one could see.

Pain kept laying its evidence

On my table.

Look.

Look.

Look.

But hope …

Hope is a beautiful liar.

And I believed her.

• 

No more.

Now I know the language.

I know the blade

Hidden inside the glance.

I know praise

When praise has teeth.

I know the sudden retreat,

The little vanishing act

That leaves me following

The shape of an absence.

I know what you wanted.

Not my flowers.

Not my fragrance.

Not the rooms

I opened with trembling hands.

You wanted the taking.

The little laugh

After the precious thing

Has realized

It has been used.

You wanted the flower

After it had been plucked.

The heart

After it had been opened.

The woman

After she had been taught

To doubt her own reflection.

• 

But look.

Look at me now.

There is nothing left

For you to break.

The garden is empty.

The flowers are gone.

The perfume has burned away.

The wound you worshipped

Has closed its red mouth.

You thought my heart

Was a house you could enter

Whenever you pleased.

You were wrong.

I have changed the locks.

I have boarded the windows.

I have taken my name

Back from your tongue.

And this -

This hollow chamber

You left inside me …

Is not a tomb.

It is a room.

Mine.

I will fill it slowly.

With rain.

With green things.

With the wild, ridiculous music

Of a heart

That no longer asks permission.

You can keep your bitterness.

Keep your knives.

Keep your little kingdom

Of locked doors and ashes.

I am leaving.

Not beautifully.

Not gracefully.

I am leaving

With blood on my shoes,

With flowers crushed in my fists,

With your voice still rattling

Somewhere behind my teeth.

But I am leaving.

And for the first time

The road does not lead to you.

The road leads away.

Away.

Away.

And I—

I am not the flower

Beneath your wheel.

I am the root.

I am the earth

After the fire.

I am the hand

Opening the gate.

I am the woman

Who finally understands:

Being hurt

Was never love.

And this heart …

This stupid, stubborn,

Beautiful animal …

Is mine.

Mine.

Mine.