_heart gallery.

My heart hangs hundreds of portraits
On the walls inside of my chest.
All of the same girls.
Smiling in their frames
Like they knew they tiptoed in my dreams,
Haunting me for giving them the code
To unlock the cryptic tick-tock of my pulse.
A nostalgic hum of could have’s
And should have’s
And would have’s.
Exhibit numbers in the corners
Like there were expiry dates
Tattooed on my heart
For the place I reserved for each one of them.

A. With the dimples you can stand in
And a laugh like ivory piano keys.
She stumbled in late by accident
But she was the first.
The first to Jackson Pollock cupid’s blood
All over the white walls.
The first face.

B. The girl with the crooked grin
Hanging lopsidedly like it was trying
To pirouette into a perfect pose.

C. Eyes like a labyrinth
And the fire of a minotaur.
With curves like an hourglass
With too much time on its hands.

D. A smile like a lighthouse
Unpredictable gale on a summer afternoon.
Handed me cocoons made of telephone wires
Built to birth the butterflies she left in my stomach.

E. The biggest portrait that hangs on the wall.
Paint still fresh, abstract
Like the most intentional of mistakes.
The painting that calls me out from my dreams
With a gentle breeze on her tongue
And passion painted on her lips.
Unnatural in her natural beauty.
Clumsiness choreographed with the grace of her walk
And a style: half smarts, half substance
Half hidden in her smile.
The last face.

The echoes in the halls of my chest
Like the cavity was a woodwind instrument
And they still know exactly how to play me
Like favourite love songs on repeat.
Memories mass produced in the factories
With molds for hot blooded molten metal
Dripping from my forehead and drenching my spine
In all the seconds I spilled from my fingertips.

And my heart refuses to take them down.
Frames them in my regrets
On a mantle of missed opportunities.
Masochistic in its stubbornness.
Its idea of beauty.
The beauty where the art comes from in exchange.
Where the words band-aid the scars
Where the pain is a pigment
And the canvas bleeds beautiful
But I can’t get them off the walls.
Still hangs onto the nails I drilled into my back
When each one emptied their feathers onto my lap
Just to remind me it was wrong
To try and go too close to the sun.