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you can have my heart

if you don't mind broken things

[lucy kaplansky]

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anne: no! if she pees on the electrical cords, then she'll

be electrocuted! and then we won't have internet!

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there are some things that seem to make up everything in my mind and chest. i only remember them sometimes, but when i think of them, i almost stop breathing.

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you're sending mixed signals, they tell me. and they're absolutely right. my center seems to be cracked, disjointed. there is no wholeness here, i want to tell the woman on the other end of the phone, the boy sitting across from me on the couch, the dog looking up at me from the carpet.

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you need someone who knows herself, who can lead you, who knows where the maps are kept. i don't. i wake up in the morning and for a moment it is as though i have just been created, like i am waiting for someone to press life back into my chest. they expect coherence, and direction, and all i want to tell them is that i never recognize myself in pictures.

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but there are things scattered around, waiting for me, like clues. i walk into them sometimes. they remind me how to draw the pieces back in. i'll hear the opening notes of a song, or walk outside in the morning and the air smells a certain way. and for that moment i know that there are some things that are rightfully mine, including myself. the only thing left to do is to claim them.