Where the Heart is

I wanted you to break my heart. It would feel so much better knowing that it was an action coming from you. Knowing that I would exist in your mind for that fraction of a moment, if only to feel the popping of my arteries before the blood spilled into your hands.

I wanted you to tear it to pieces.

But now you are breaking my paper thin organ, and I didn't even notice at first. It's layered like an onion, it seems; you took your scalpel and with nimble fingers scraped each layer away without me even realizing what had happened. And there before you sits my heart, each layer dissected so crisp and neatly.

I think I'll keep this for myself, you say. And I smile my innocence with dying cherry lips and nod at the anomalous object sitting before me.

Home is where the heart is, you murmur into my ears, quick fingers sliding in s shapes down my sides. I shiver and remain silent. So you can always stay with me. It wasn't until later that I questioned where you slept at night, or whether the thermostat was broken.  

You pretend to drop it, holding my onion peeled heart high in the air. I stutter, and you hold an icy fingertip to the bottom of my jaw. Do you know the power of words? You ask, some things are better left unsaid.

When I open my jaw again to argue, I watch each layer plummet to the ground with every syllable that leaves my mouth, until I can see the paper melt in the rain and flutter into the garbage along the side of the road.

Because home is where the heart is.