Stolen Hearts Poem by Lisa Nickle

It is a perfectly painless process,
having your heart stolen.
So much so, you barely feel it.
Yet when you try to take it back...
It's wrestling a lion for a scrap of meat,
messy
and it ends up just as torn.

When you do manage it,
this ageless feat of arms,
You find what use your treasure has seen,
all new dents and scratches.

There was that night,
you strove to paint
the whole town red.
It still bears the stains,
the sloshes, the strokes.

The corners have been wrinkled
from long nights wresting bed sheets
and tumbling in grass.
A foot print is left to the right.

A caring heart turned
to stepping stone
and that little extra inch
to reach something
beyond its own aspiration

The creases at the edges
are from the many books
left dog-eared for their poems.
Those songs sung aloud, off key,
exhortations of that heart,
rang louder than that still small voice
telling how much love it had to give.

And then there is that piece missing...
it just refused to yield.
So you left it there in its stubbornness,
in another's possession,
though they have no more want of it.

Yet you find they
have not left so cleanly either.
They have left a piece
of their beating heart in yours
stitched deep, a patch in the middle,
rooting itself to be a part of yours
as though it always was.

One day, a crook will come
to steal your heart for good,
they will see what time has done
and find it precious just the same.
They will take it
and you'll not want it back.