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my heart is back home. here, it is dusty. tired. used.

it lies in my mother’s arms. she feels its shallow beats whenever she holds my sister; but our hearts cannot intertwine, my sister and i, because she is small, fragile, innocent, and i am broken, lost; i have seen too much. heard too much. felt too much. i would never expose my sister to a thunderstorm without her knowledge of rain first. no one deserves to be broken down before they even learn how to build themselves back up. she creates her own luck, and i am unlucky. i would shatter if our worlds ever touched.

my heart lies beneath my mother’s smile. in between the bags under her eyes and the pieces of gray hair becoming more and more present with age. but she is so beautiful, and she keeps my heart beautiful, and i could never ask for a love greater.

my heart can be found in pieces; for it is not whole. it never has been. there are parts of me that take refuge in my old, little town. find a corner sitting peacefully on the train tracks, smoking a cigarette, talking to friends that never quite understood, but still listened. find a middle piece in the parking lot of wawa, spending her mother’s money on peanut m&ms and sweet tea, even though she knows that she should not be burning holes through paper that she has not earned. find jagged edges sleeping in the backseat of different guys’ cars, feeling a little lonely even in the presence of strong arms and raspy voices, realizing that she is crying on the ride home the next morning because this is not right, this is not who she is; she should not be laying next to boys who do not even ask about her dreams upon waking up. she should not be begging for attention, affection, when she knows that it will end up hurting her in the end.

my heart is back home. here, it is in hiding, but no one has bothered to search for it, why? i do not know. does it make me sad? no.

find a part so small that you may miss it the first time resting softly on an old couch in her father’s living room. he says to it "watch your siblings for a minute" but disappears for hours. he says to it "why do you stay up so late?" knowing that he is the root of her nightmares. he says to it "if i ever catch you smoking, i will kill you." find the remains of this already shrinking heart two years later, standing in front of her father's apartment, lighting up a cigarette with a black lighter that she stole from a friend, middle finger attempting to communicate with a building that holds an unresponsive man inside, but he never comes out. he does not want to see the mess of a young woman he has created. he does not want to be held responsible for that kind of damage. so he plays the victim; it was what he was best at, anyway.

my heart is scarred. torn. put your hand on my chest and you will feel nothing, or so i have been told. you will feel an emptiness so deep, you will most likely get lost trying to find your way in, or out... i do not know which one is worse.

find pieces of my heart scattered on the grounds that i have walked on, find it clinging to the palms of old friends, past lovers, strangers i have had conversations with on the train but never took a second to ask for their names... find it burning, let it burn, watch it burn. do not put out a fire that does not want to settle down.

my heart is back home. here, it is dusty. tired. used. abandoned. mistreated. ignored.

here, i do not exist.

here, i do not wish to exist.