Slender Pin, Innocuous

You put a hole in my heart. Ruptured a hole in my heart. Slender pin, innocuous - like in the pincushions in mom's sewing room. You put a hole in my heart. I keep thinking this is about him, the one who dug his fingers into my sternum like a surgeon and pulled my ribcage apart, but it's not. It's about you, Kenn. You put a hole in my heart. How could someone as beautiful and full of life and sass as you die from something as small as a virus? How could you behave with me the way you did and not love me even a little? This is where the gaslighting started and I know you didn't do it on purpose - you were busy trying not to die. But you put a hole in my heart. And from that hole, I think my floor of safety died. The version of me who believed everything would always be okay died. Grief, sex, loss, lust, beauty, pain, all of this packed into one story, at one time, and even though if you hadn't contracted AIDS and died slow motion in front of me I think the rest of that story would have turned out so differently - even though, even though, even though. You put a hole in my heart. You're the one who touched my heart and after you died, I couldn't bear to let anyone see it. To be fair, I tried, but no one around me cared that you died or that I died when you died.

You put a hole in my heart. 

Ruptured a hole in my heart but I feel the hole in my abdomen as I write this.

Memory of that torrential rain type of hole.

Black sheet of paper after you died hole.

Black sheet of paper all over.

And then I started putting holes in me. 

This piece was written inside our live circle.

If your body holds a charge you long to release without having to get into anything, my process can help.

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