Broken Hearts, Paper Hearts

The birds wake me up.  I shoot at them with a pellet gun.  I miss.  I’ve never been a good shot.  I brush my teeth in front of a broken mirror.  It broke when I slammed the medicine cabinet door the other day.  There are still bits of broken mirror on the bathroom floor.  Seven years of bad luck.

It’s sunny outside.  I have to squint on the walk to work.  Squinting gives me a headache.  Too many people smile at me on the way to work.  Always a nod or a good morning when they pass.  I don’t nod back.  I don’t patronize their good mornings.  It’s too bright outside.  My eyes hurt.

Work is painted pink.  Cardboard cutouts of hearts and flowers.  Pink and red.  Everyone is smiling.  No one’s happy to be at work, but they’re all smiling.  I don’t smile at them.  I go to my desk and sit.  Away from the pink cardboard flowers.

It stinks of chocolate.  Everyone talks about their plans.  They say, “He’s taking me to dinner,” or “We’re just gonna catch a movie.”  They smile when they say it.  Their cheeks turn pink.  No one asks me about my plans.  I wouldn’t share them anyway.

The boss is wearing a pink shirt.  It reflects off his pink skin.  He smiles wide and ugly.  His ears are too big for his head.  He stinks of chocolate too.  The women in the office get roses.  The men don’t get anything.  There’s a bowl of Hershey’s kisses for everyone.  I don’t like Hershey’s kisses.  They taste like brown chalk.

The radio at work plays love songs.  My squinting headache doesn’t go away.  The people in the office aren’t working.  I hear them talking.  Still talking about their plans.  “He’s so sweet.  I wish mine would do something like that.”  “She doesn’t know yet.  I’m gonna surprise her after work.”  They should be working.  Not talking about personal things.  This is a place of work.  Their conversations distract me.

The boss leaves early.  He never comes back from lunch.  I want to leave early.  I can’t.  They’d fire me.  I’m not the boss.  I don’t have big, stupid ears, or a pink shirt.  I have to come back to the office after lunch.  I have to listen to love songs over the loudspeaker.  They keep talking about their plans.  Everyone knows everyone else’s plans, but they keep talking about them anyway.  It’s getting harder to focus on work.

I stop working.  The boss is gone.  There is no need to work hard.  I browse the internet.  Google is decorated with hearts.  Every website is decorated with hearts.  I don’t like these pink, paper hearts.  Human hearts are complicated, ugly, and burnt red.  The pink hearts are boring and flat. 

I like human hearts.  The way they twitch.  The way you can see them jumping in people’s chest if you look close enough.  I like the way they sound.  They sound like something heavy is walking up behind you.  When you speed up they speed up.  I like that.

Human hearts aren’t symmetrical.  They’re gross and slippery.  Some hearts are dark with plaque.  I even prefer the dark, plaque-corroded hearts before the pink hearts.  The old hearts that beat like an unbalanced washing machine.  The young hearts that beat smooth, with energy and rhythm.  I like hearts that beat off rhythm too.  The ones that hurt.  The ones that send a numb ache down the left arm.  Those are real hearts.  Not these pink, paper hearts.

Real hearts break.  They get old and malfunction.  Even young hearts break.  Doctors have to pry children’s chests open like clam shells to fix them.  Young hearts are delicate.  One mistake and a doctor could break it for good. 

They’ve gotten better at fixing broken hearts.  They replace hearts like swapping engines in a Volkswagen Beatle.  Split open and dead one moment, a steady pulse the next.  That’s nice.

Every heart breaks at least twice.  Sometimes much more.  Not the paper hearts or the candy hearts with the little notes written on them.  The candy hearts taste like plastic.  I’m talking about the ugly, bloody hearts.  The hearts that need jolts of electricity to survive sometimes. Real hearts break all the time.

There’s a different kind of break.  A break that doctors haven’t figured out how to fix.  They break the way a mirror breaks.  You can’t fix a broken mirror.  They say you get seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror.  A broken heart feels worse than bad luck.  I don’t know if they ever heal.  Some broken hearts never heal – I know that.  Some people say they do.  I don’t believe them.

There’s the broken hearts doctors can fix, and the broken hearts doctors don’t even bother with.  If they break because of French Fries or stress, doctors can sometimes fix them.  If they break because of a woman – there are no doctors for that.  Men can break hearts too.  When a person breaks a heart, it’s like throwing a vase against a cement wall.  Even if you do find all the pieces and glue them back together, it will never be the same. 

There will always be rough spots on a refurbished heart.  There will be holes too, where things slip through.  No one can fix it perfect.  It may sound the same, but it’s broken for good.  Maybe it’s heavier on one side than the other.  Maybe it’s callused with scar tissue.  I don’t know exactly.  I know that it’s never the same.  The weight distribution is off, or it doesn’t have the same acceleration.  Something is always off after a person breaks your heart.

Everyone in the office leaves early.  No one waits around to chat.  They all hurry to their cars.  The women clutch their roses.  The men stink of chocolate.  All of them smiling.  I’m the last one to leave.  I pop a heart-shaped balloon with a safety pin on the way out.  It echoes in the empty office.  Everything is still pink and red.

I take my time walking home.  People sell flowers by the freeway.  I watch the people driving.  Their cars are filled with pink and red balloons.  I see them smiling.  The couples are holding hands.  I bet those cars stink like chocolate.

I get home and drop my bag in the hallway.  I pee with the door open and the light off.  I walk into the back room.  She’s lying on the ugly, aluminum bed.  The hospital sent the bed over.  Her eyes are closed.  A tube blows stale oxygen into her nostrils.  Without any hair or eyebrows, her head looks alien-like.  I can see the veins in her head.  The machine beside her beeps like a cross between a smoke detector and a metronome.

Her eyes open for a second and close again. They’re bloodshot.  I sit down beside the bed.  I lean forward and press my ear to her chest.  I hear her heart beating.  It sounds tired. 

My heart breaks – again.