Please Be Careful When You Take My Heart Poem by Mario, Lucien, Rene Odekerken

Hold it gently, as if it were a bird,
wings trembling in the hollow of your hands.
Do not close your fingers too tightly--
it has known cages before,
and it does not wish to forget the sky.

Do not set it down carelessly,
like a book you no longer wish to read.
Its pages are worn,
but every crease holds a story,
every tear was once a river of feeling.

If you must leave,
do not drop it from your grasp.
Place it softly in the quiet of the morning,
where the sun can warm what you no longer will.

But if you choose to keep it,
the know this:
it is not unbroken,
but it still beats,
and it still hopes
to be held like something precious.