Choosing

All our little heartbreaks, they add up.
Cracks form in corners we have neglected,
on aorta, vacuoles.
                        What leaks out eventually
is not what we think,
transforming pain to poetry –
            it’s that we hoard
in the basement of our mind
like a clipped-out horoscope
or fortune cookie slip from a first date:
            It could be better, but it’s good enough
We must figure what stays, what goes –
                                    the smile?
                                    the hand?
                                    the kiss
                        on the earlobe?
The ability of your mind to connect scent with color
bright as sunlight,
            faces hazily envisaged as your first love?
Choose carefully, but know
discretion will not save
the discarded.
It is a severe calculus, like choosing
a favorite child: which one
to sacrifice at the altar, which
to feed the sweet nectar?

~

Read another —>
Back to Poetry page

First published in Five 2 One, 2015