Cardiomyopathy
Darlene Anita Scott

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I have not had my heart broken.
Never by a man, not the boys
I gilded in ball-pointed cursive.
Each unspecific as sidewalks
that tore the skin of my knees,
my ankles crumpling dominoes
at the bidding of maladroit adolescence.
Let blood as red; left wounds
pink as Valentine gifts.

I have not had my heart rhythm revised
by sex promised by boys like one who panted
at the beginning of an aspirational night,
“it’s what everybody else is doing.”
Except us, sleep thick as blue cocktails
& too many beers catching his snores in its net.

The cracks in my heart have not come
from bodies offered in the guise of honey;
haven’t shaken my hand seconds too long;
taken my eyes for gazing balls; my limbs for casualwear.
What pocks its surface could be mistaken
for the debris their kind leave behind,
absorbing into raw cotton or leaving
potholes that corrupt the ride but rarely
wreck the alignment. Except an MRI
reminds me all hearts are made of glass:
transparent, fragile, breakable.