"Beating Her Chest"

I tell my heart to shut up, stop lingering where she doesn’t belong, beating in directions she shouldn’t for the sake of morality and social customs, but she never listens to me, never turns an ear to the voice of reason, never can remember each time she has been cut and stabbed or stolen from the wrinkled edge of my green shirt sleeve. She calls out my name, yelling about personal freedoms and how I never let her spread her love around. How I keep her caged for the properness of it, and she raises her fists to the chains that bind her fast to one lonely soul for all eternity. She begs me to understand that feeling love makes it real despite my glooming cloud of self-made guilt hovering over us both. She starts beating her chest again, hard and fast so I cant ignore her; Reminds me that love never dies or shrivels or stays in one place for very long, but each time I find it lying on my doorstep, on the radio, in the grass, on his face, in her eyes, on a kiss that the rush of it can still overwhelm me, the warmth of it feeling as good as the first time it was tasted. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Munyori Poerty Journal 10/07