Paper Hearts

Paper hearts full of paper people in paper houses and paper words,
Not real, yet realer than anything else.
They hold within their pressed pages
My tears and my memories,
Like sealed lips that will never tell.
This paper heart has been mine
As long as my brother has been mine,
And it was my brother who tore its face off – accident, he says.
Is that irony?
And my mother fused together its skin,
Skin that is stained black and blue like a bruise.
This paper heart holds the smell of spring on the swing set outside
When I was nine.
And the whispers of winter at twelve,
The taste of blue, dewy air
And salt water at fifteen, promises tomorrow.
And I am grateful for the paper words and the paper trees
That breathe life
Into my paper hearts.