This is MY blob, not yours!

Maybe it’s a blob,

maybe just a mass

this thing, heart-shaped,

thin layers glued in brown.

Light spots, dark spots,

some that ooze and seep

like rain,

others dry,

sprinkled with glitter,

with glue gone stiff.

A child must have drawn on it once,

a faded purple marker scrawled across,

edges tinged with pink.

Pink. Meaning love, meaning hugs,

meaning all the good things left from you.

From you.

It is broken, wet, and crumpled.

From you, from YOU, from all of you.

Look what you’ve done:

to the blob,

to this mass,

to this heart-shaped thing

that no longer looks like a heart.

I can’t make out what it used to be.

So I peel it back,

layer by fragile layer,

leaving behind

the white stuff,

like pith on an orange

white stuff that never scrapes away,

no matter how much I itch and scratch,

no matter how I hope it will.

And maybe

this blob, this mass...

maybe it really is a heart.

Pink, brown, purple,

filled with glue and sparkles

paper mâché

lathered in the layers

of my memories,

myself,

and you.

All of you

who shaped it,

who covered it,

who peel it open

only to paste on more.

And still,

I find that I like it

this blob, this mass, this heart.

It’s fine.

It’s mine.

It has pink.

So I’ll be fine inside it.

I’ll curl within,

make it warm

in this cold-tiled world.

It beats, it churns, it learns.

It knows, it hopes—

but mostly, it loves

in its own strange way.

So let it love.

Let me love.

This blob, this mass, this heart.

It loves, and its glows

and it's mine.