Poetry

the safety box.

my heart fell out of
its safety box -

a little brown box with
a little bronze lock
and a little bronze key
hidden safely.

my heart fell out of
its safety box
and rolled down the dusty road
towards nothing -
away from it all.

I chased, of course,
with my little brown box
with its little bronze lock
in my hand.

down the road,
and through the brush,
and into the farm of an old, cold man.

and i chased my heart
as it rolled from me,
desperate to escape
my safety box.

what is safety, to a heart,
but a cold stone wall?
and so it ran,
and i chased,
through the farm, through the fields.

and i stopped, for a second,
because it was oh so hard to breathe,
without a heart.
but my heart raced on,
towards the sun.

and it jumped up, towards the sun,
to the hands of a stranger,
and i ran,
to him,
to take it back.

and he held it, so tight, so it couldn't run,
and my whole self got to him just in time.

i asked him, for the heart,
to put it in its box,
and he sighed,
and handed over what was mine.

and the poor young stranger
stared at the sun,
found a small metal thing
on a string
round his neck.

and after i locked my heart
in its little brown box,
with its little bronze lock,
i'd found that the key
was gone.