Wild at Heart

Wild hearts can’t be broken. Wild hearts are those that have bits scattered like miscellaneous puzzle pieces. My heart-puzzle will never be complete. At the age of fourteen, I held my heart (metaphorically, of course) up to the light that shined through it like the sun through a church’s stained glass window. It was thin, smooth, no nicks or cracks. In my other hand a held a sledgehammer – heavy, cold, and mean. I pulled it back, like I was getting ready to test my strength, swung as if I were a baseball player looking for my next big paycheck, and shattered through that thin fragile object. I collected the pieces that pricked my fingers and stuffed them into my deep pockets.

There was only a little blood left on the sheets – it was the first time and people say that’s to be expected. I didn’t leave much else of a trace, but there was a small piece of my heart that I dug out of my pockets and tucked under his pillow. I didn’t hear from him again after I snuck out that night and I was okay with that. But I know each time he uses those sheets, he’ll see a reminder of me.

By the time I was eighteen, I wasn’t sure if I was going to have enough pieces left of my heart for the rest of my life. I could feel the collection in my pocket diminish – little by little, year by year. Different men, different nights.  

At the age of twenty two, my friends thought I was crazy. I was “risking pregnancy” or an “STD.” But I wasn’t the crazy one. I listened to them for nights on end, crying on the phone over the most recent guy to break their hearts. Some had their long term relationships, others had their relation-shits, and I just had my flings. They lasted as long as the orange tip on the end of my cigarette. I had them when I needed them and when I was done with them, I tossed them aside.

Maybe it’s tradition – as a young girl, you think about your wedding and your future husband. As a young woman, you take those dreams and you really start to think about them. Then by the time you’re my age (twenty five) and all of your friends have gotten married and you have more bridesmaid dresses than you care to think about that are cluttering your closet, you should want to get married, settle down, have a family, two dogs, a white picket fence with an emerald green lawn.

But I don’t have a marrying heart. I don’t have much of a heart left, if we’re telling the truth. Like puzzle pieces, my heart is scattered. A piece under Mark’s – from last night – couch. A piece in the slipper of the guy I used to babysit for. Somewhere in John Adam’s High, there’s an old paper of mine that I slipped a piece of my heart between the pages of after being bent over Mr. Turner’s desk. Isaac keeps a piece in his pocket to remind him that I’m not the relationship type, but he can call me whenever he’s up for a good time. Tim has one stashed on a shelf in the closet. …To name a few. The rest, well, they sit in a Mason Jar and I’ll take a few each time I leave the house. I never know where I’ll need to leave some. Under a street lamp at midnight, the backseat of a stranger’s car, the frozen food section at the grocery store, or a cup holder at the movie theater.