eat your heart out

a poem

We are born with a hundred hearts.

Each beats proudly.
Unadulterated excitement and wonder
drum through the playground of youth.

We grow older.
The space we carved for new experience
becomes a doorway for poisonous preaching.

To feel this much is weakness.
Only the strongest can survive.
We believe because we will always be children.

We assume hearts break cleanly—
from heartbreak, from loss.
But they never do.

We assume hearts consume each other cleanly—
with intention, with reason.
But they never do.

The playground is silent, stained red.
Only when the survivor tastes cannibalism
does it become the hollow victor.

One heart slumps at the top of the slide,
sick with spoiled dreams it cannot digest.
No one waits at the bottom.

One heart visits ninety-nine graves,
sometimes all in one day.
Only mustard grows in their garden.

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The poem was inspired by Hou Yi, the legendary archer who shot down nine of ten suns to save his people from burning.

In return for his heroism, the gods granted him a pill of immortality, which ultimately set the stage for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

I’m not sure why the concept of Hou Yi has stuck with me all these years.

I believe there’s a time and place to let stories go. Maybe it was time.