In the parcel of your tongue
I found my heart wrapped in
webs. Spun from a different
perspective, this love is a
narrative, and not a saga.
A story, not merely a chapter.
If every heart is a fist-sized
thing then all love is violence.
The Grinch’s heart grew three
times its size. Imagine all the
damage you could do. For the
first time in a long while
I remembered that I had already
missed all the regular milestones
of a regular person’s life. Their
veins are a circuit of wires, and
mine are tributaries leading to the sea.
My blood is my blood is my blood.
I wish I could be somebody else
who could have had a more fulfilling life
but I have been doing perfectly fine
sitting in the corner unravelling
my own heart, that wretched thing.
I don’t have a single bone in my body
which isn’t twisted, which isn’t malicious,
which has good intentions. Whenever
I find one, I draw it out like a stork.
I toss it into my drawer of half-written
poems and the lack of surprise. I want
to say that I love you but I am not
prepared to deal with that if it were true.
I don’t know what it means to be a lover,
so I tell myself that I am simply not
a player in this game called love,
that I should confine myself to the sidelines
cheering people on, the playbill in my hand
like I’m a patron of the art of making out
crashing and burning and again wrapping
too many things in silk? I’m sitting in the
booth, throwing my glasses off the balcony,
screaming at the actors how I could do a
much better job if they’d let me. But in reality
I know no matter how much I might riot
and protest, I am still asleep, my rocking
a buzzing cicada in its silent shell.

Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.