Everything Is Shiny

What if tomorrow my heart opened like a sinkhole and
swallowed up my doubts and anxieties as if they were cars
or lawnmowers or above-ground pools.

Destruction is a part of healing after all and I’d gladly
have a body made of limestone if it meant I could stop
replaying the same old hurts in my head over and over and over.

I saw a question on the internet: would you rather
live through your worst heartbreak again or have that person
erased from your memory completely? On days like these

I’ll always choose the latter. Give me a blank slate
a freshly-drawn bath – a born-again brain that doesn’t
anticipate all the ways that others are out to get me. Don’t

tell me these scars are signs of wisdom –
you don’t know them for the barricades they are.
I used to think I needed my pain to write poems:

I’d like to say I know better but it just keeps sneaking in.
Yesterday I heard a kid at the park say everything is shiny
and I want so badly to be able to agree with him.