Holding your heart

Melted crayon fusing my flesh together

Hot and reeking

Putty that ties together each digit

Reluctant to slip off my fingers

And managing to cake beneath my nails.

Blunt as they are,

They are still sharp enough

To paint with thin red and clotted black and vibrant pink.

My handprints are never the same.

Every handle I grab

Turns pink with the now chalky remnants

That will forever more stay.

Like silly string on a hot summer fence

Tacky and indelible and stronger in resolve

Than the grizzled faces at laundromats.

They watch me even now.

It turns to slop as it sloughs off my palm

And plummets into the muddy bank

That has nestled around the new pinewood porch planks.

The mud splashes onto it

But nothing could have prepared it for the heart’s devious rejection

And all that touches it is spurned

And cast away.

This mass of tissue throbbing among sticks

And boatloads of acorns

And the bbs of airsoft guns that have not been fired since 

Days when we would run around until evenfall. 

It blends in rather nicely,

Camouflaged.

What to do with it now?