Matters of the Heart

The heart is, technically, a muscle.
When we injure our muscles, we do not say we have broken them.
We tear them, pull them, strain them.

We strengthen them, build them, curl them.
Breaking is for hard things and the heart is not hard.
But the heart indeed breaks, doesn’t it, when it meets the world?

Recently I lost a friend. Now I find pieces of my heart
everywhere. In trees. Under the passenger seat of my car.
A seagull overhead carries one in its beak like a fish.

50% of my father’s heart died nearly a decade ago,
we find out, after his heart attack.
If half of his heart is dead, can he love less?

Or does it mean the other half works harder, loves more,
because it has to lug the other half along?
There was a fox that visited my parents’ house all last winter,

dragging its leg behind him, limping
and limping until my father worried it was going to die.
Before he could trap it to bring it to a vet,

it disappeared, and they expected the worst.
But last month, he told me he saw it again,
limping much less and full of bright color.

When I think of the heart, it is like that.