Posted on by Allison Marie Conway

Rip Your Heart Out

What will you do when the words run out, when the sands of the grains of the time you spent together slide through your fingers only to scatter on the wind.

Not everything you want is something you need. How do you tell the difference? I carry within me multiple hearts. I know because at least a few have stopped beating but I’m still here. People have come and people have gone, some a complete surprise and some I have helped along.

I sit at my altar staring into a single flame which flickers and sways slowly in the morning breeze. I picture you and your liquid movements melting all over me. I imagine a pale blue sky above a cathedral, so full of black birds circling the steeple that their bodies and wings block out the sun.

I wait in a smooth black dress by a fountain, my hair undone. Water cascading in grand arched streams, from the hands of topless maidens, from the mouths of naked children who reach for the heavens, white marble statue eyes, cold, like ecstasy, unfeeling.

A filthy city crawling to life beneath my fingernails. My skin is hot with a fire I am dying to remember. I’m wearing that lipstick you like, dark as blood, you hesitate to touch. You watch me like a picture you suspect may come to life. The ache in you possesses me like a predator, hungering for prey.

If you come for me with teeth, I will offer you my neck. If you come for me with roses, I will fasten them in my hair for you, that you may imagine me innocent. I open my mouth and swallow the sun to keep precious the night. When I close my eyes, I still see you. Feel you ring through me hollow as church bells as they clang high above, shatter the air against my chest, locked in a tower made of stone.

I once wrote a poem that went like this: A boy takes a girl and carries her home. She kisses him deep, makes love to him sweet, and come the serene light of dawn, can never return. And though one of them dies, the rest of the hearts within her continue to beat.

15 Replies to “Rip Your Heart Out”

      1. Oh please no, thank you for posting that, I’m a really big fan of the way you write, I even wrote one post inspired from you named “When Reality Hits”. Just keep posting and engulf my mind in the magic of your words the way you always have💖✨

        Liked by 1 person

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          1. It is my pleasure ma’am, would be an honour if you checked out that post though, it was the first time I wrote something in that manner and if you could give me some tips to improve I could include it in a similar piece I’m currently working on! My extreme apologies for the trouble I’m causing you🙏

            Liked by 1 person

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