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[wordsfromapublicbathroom]

What are the ways to win my heart

It isn't easy. This, I'll admit to any that ask. My sister thought she won my heart. She held it aloft, victorious. It beat in time with hers, or so I thought, pulsing in perfect synchronisation. She smiled at me and held hers out to take. To trade. I looked at it. It was dead. She lost my heart. Mine will not be a substitute for hers. I wept for the daughter whose heart she would siphon all life from. Years later when my niece arrived upon my doorstep, her heart beating with the drums of a rebellion. Strong and deep. Sister had not been successful in the heartharvest. My mother never won my heart. She held it before it became a prize. She was its keeper. The guard at the gate, the protector of potential. But when she abandoned it she left it vulnerable and the door ajar. My father took up the job. He did his best. Polished up my cracked heart, sewed the split down the middle back up with a shoelace and a fishing hook. Yet it did not beat. It was not dead but unable to gather the energy to pulse. Father tried to give me his heart instead but mine would not thud along to the same beat anymore. The silence between contractions of his own heart inspired mine to beat. To fill the quiet. Depression doesn't kill the heart it forces it to change, to slow. My father did not win my heart. In this instance my heart won. I was seventeen and my heart had suddenly become desirable to win, suitors came, contenders in the race. Fire was first. He used my heart as kindling. If it was alight, he reasoned, the heart would need his oxygen to keep it strong, need his body for fuel. My heart burnt. The fire was more wild than he thought it would be, more powerful, stronger than him. My heart consumed his fuelbody and inhaled his oxygenkisses. My heart burnt so bright that I turned him to ash. The grey flakes of my first champion blew away in the wind. The second time my heart was not won. It was stolen. She took. The Catburgler saw my heart and ripped it skilfully from the podium of my chest. Distracted me with fox fur hair and smiles, teeth shining diamonds. Her fingers nimbly flitted through my rib cage and slipped my heart out. And I never noticed. But as she walked away my heart had gone with her. She wore it like her diamond teeth and her fur hair. Her jewellery glittered as Catburgler walked, her fingers were heavy with gold and rubies, her throat was laden with chains. Yet none of it weighed anything to her. My heart, jewel encrusted, hung around her neck on a golden thread. It beat hard against her skin, knocking at her chest. She would not react. If you looked hard enough you could see the hearts hanging off her, covered in gold. Some were listless and small but they all beat against her skin. She vibrated with the amount of heart beats. It was amazing she could not feel them disrupting her own rhythm, until you noticed the gap. The string that looped around her neck. Her heart was gone. Stolen by another. A constant thrum of enough hearts feels much the same as no beat at all. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth could never pass the bars of bone to touch my heart but the seventh walked through and sat resolutely in the red caverns. Stubbornly unmoving. He stared around as though cave paintings adorned the walls. I wasn't sure what he wanted but he stayed. I called him Explorer. He rose each day to the blood, cooked, ate, slept. All while staring at the delicate mass of muscle and capillaries. I paid him no mind. I had a life to live. But one day while I sat reading a book my rib cage shook and opened. Explorer climbed out my heart, a great rucksack on his back. His exploration done. My heart had been discovered. Every crevice caressed, every pathway followed, every secret revealed. It felt hollow now. He smiled at me. "It's beautiful in there." He said. I wasn't sure how to react. No one had ever spent so long within my heart. "I can't thank you enough" he said. I could hear my self tell him it was a pleasure, as it had been. Then he left. What are the ways to win my heart?