this is the art of living with a ticking heart

It's definitely not April 3 anymore, but I had the longest day ever and then I went to see Captain America: Winter Soldier, and I'm still awake, so here is a poem for April 3.

(I have a lot of feelings about Winter Soldier. Too many to articulate right now. I need to see it again, and then I maybe need to write about it, but, uh, yeah. I was fairly emotionally shattered before I went to see the movie. Now I am basically a pile of smoking emotional wreckage.)

Burn all your bridges
just so that you can build them again
with thicker ropes.

Hurt all the people you love
and then commit every felony to win them back.

Drown yourself in bleach until not even Heaven's light
can compare to how bright you can burn.

Turn yourself inside out
and paint your organs the color of what you see
in your dreams.

This is the art of
living with a ticking heart, a grenade you
throw through windows to make a
point that language
has no room for.

This is how I destroyed you.

And this,
is how I kept you alive.

Dig yourself a ditch, six
feet deep, and bury everything that you've ever
said, everything that you've never
meant, and everything that has
burned you and left you with nothing
but ash.

—Shinji Moon, "Advice From Dionysus," 2013. As I learned when I went to look for a citation for this poem, which I got originally from marina, I discovered that it can be sourced to the poet's tumblr. So, you know, gotta love the modern world. I should probably buy her book.