Bless our crooked little hearts


Once upon a time, we still believed
in right and wrong—not just relativity
and physics and hormones. Who remembers
thinking the moon followed them home?

Our parents didn't explain much
about the wars on TV, yet
some of us grew up listening for
airplanes anyway, not for footsteps behind us.

It'd be easy to blame our fathers, say
they didn't prepare us for what comes
after the fight but before the dust
settles, when we're alone and checking
to see if our voice still works.

On a late night in a sinking city,
ask a girl dripping lavender oil on
lightbulbs what it is to pray for easy
sleep. What keeps her awake—her mind
or the things in it? Every silhouette
in every window
got there somehow.

Forgiveness can't be faked. Ask the ones
who'd rather run and let the thieves keep
what they took. These were the girls
with the warm winter coats and soft
sheets they traded for drunken-piano
lessons and gun-rattle charm bracelets,
the ones who startle themselves still
when they catch their own eye
at the bottoms of empty glasses.

Some of us planned escape, bloody-nosed
seventeen-year-olds whispering long
into the night about Arizona. They even
had the getaway car picked out—a dusty blue
pickup they'd sell wind-chimes out of.

The West sure sounded like a
good idea. There was California and
its beaches. They'd make coffee for
suits and surfers and write screenplays,
give themselves new names.

One was going on stories
from her movie-star aunt. The other
read too much Kerouac against
her mother's warning. It's easy
for men to drift, falling in love
every thirty seconds. Women fight
like swimming upstream.

A stranger's bed feels a lot like
open road when you can't be
at home in your own skin.

Watch the ones who look too young
to be so good at high heels. They
convince themselves the click-clack can play
metronome to lullabies of men with time to learn
what broken really tastes like. In places
where a sweet mess garners gentle
tending, they go, salt-licking matador sisters
with glued-together statue parts for memory.

The song of numbered days burns hot
in the throats of those who dream
this life is just a fever. This humming
in our chests is more than heart.

This is the advance of anger we can't sleep
or write off. This is standing
steady on both legs as we stare down fate
each time is charges towards us.

Carve a notch for every
clean idea your mother gave you.
Justice is a dirty word. The world
purrs at the feet of those who know
there is no invitation like warning.


-Jess Del Balzo


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