a heart that splits is not a heart that breaks or tears, it does not grow as with the birth of a child. a heart that splits becomes two halves, no wholes. and once split it never regains its wholeness or its form, the softness of its red, the inexplicable curve of its beauty. a heart that splits cannot bear the separateness of itself, cannot bleed of its own accord or beat anything but an echo. is every song a love song? is this why we all use music so often- remiss to sing our own chords, content to hum a strangers. a heart that splits will not survive itself, it lives separate and twice and lost. it cannot know love, but loves; pieces of a piece, crumbs of a crumb. were we always dying then, just to be reborn? to sway like forgotten chamomile, flowered fragiling tea leaves a thimble full high. he reserved a date for january 2025, for his calf was born just this spring. can you imagine all that will come to pass, all that will come to die between today and that early winter morning just two januarys from now? and how no one will think to notice- the chamomile, the calf, the hearts. the woman thinks, though she knows- a heart that splits cannot think in certainties though it knows stay and go. left. and right. its preservation is a hospice care suicide; not violent or loud but gentle and slow, unassisted still. a heart can convince itself of anything: health, beauty, loyalty, love but a heart that splits, it can’t. ‘you can’t write a story about right now’ she said, ‘it’s truth’. i’m not sure i believe her but i’m glad she didn’t try to convince me.
about this poem
the writing prompt for this poem was something like “write about the thing you have to see through to write about the thing.” we all have a lens through which we see or view the world and ourselves and to take this idea a step further i believe our lens’ are most closely tied to the things we are born into, the things we don’t choose: our bodies, our gender assignment, our ethnicity, our family dynamics, etc. my big thing (among smaller things), my lens, what i live and write through is my adoption. something i of course did not choose for myself and something that is gravely misunderstood by the vast majority of people; the splintering of self, how a child adapts to survive their adoption, to continue to live outside of and away from their biological family is something i wish more people could understand and how often times it’s not much of a life at all. this poem (set in block form) is my attempt at sharing what my splintered sense of self feels like. xo
santos scribes 
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