Hearts

Yours is a pleasant walk through

Crowded downtown streets,

Admiring the traffic and weaving

Effortlessly through the throngs of people.

Mine is a mad dash from corner to corner,

Hurrying to a destination I’ve not yet been told,

Jostling and bumping and irritating

Anyone in the way.

Yours is a well-cultivated tomato plant.

Your vines are green;

Your fruits are ripe and healthy. You are so

Bountiful, you do not mind the occasional caterpillar.

Mine is a weed.

I struggle for sunlight; fight for my soil.

I wish only to grow as big as that tomato plant next to me.

Except repeatedly I am uprooted and banished from the garden.

Yours is a gentle canal, shaped by those

Who’ve touched you, leading from town to town,

Down, down, down to the sea -

Fearless of storms and turbulent undercurrents.

And mine - mine is the dirty,

Filthy, long-neglected bathtub,

Filled with the murky, worried water

In which I drowned you.