Lesson 1:

When you find it, throw it as far away as you possibly can, preferably, at a vertical angle.
Know that there is no such thing as a friendly firework,
that it will tail you like a greedy sun
just waiting to ignite your everything
and claim ownership over the ashes.

If you survive, congratulations: you’re immortal.
You’ve mastered resurrection.
This is the wrong instruction manual for you.
Please move onto the one
RE: How to hold the woman without hands

     How to love the girl without a voice box
     How to nurse the cadaver back to life

Lesson 2:

The heart is giving war the middle finger and hiding a revolver in her left pocket.
The heart doesn’t actually know how to use the revolver.
It just hates being the only one with a body full of chambers where no one wants to go.

Lesson 3:

The heart doesn’t give a fuck about Wall Street. The heart is occupying you,
wondering how there can be so much life in your veins
when all you talk about is death.
The heart thinks you should stop making your mouth a picket sign and spread that excess resurrection instead.
There is too much love in your body to keep it all locked inside your head.

Lesson 4:

If you are finding this heart on eBay, it’s only because Craigslist mistook the foster system for spam.

Lesson 5:

Love doesn’t live in the heart anymore. Maybe agape, but never eros.
Maybe liver transplant, but never support group and always anonymous.

Lesson 6:

The heart is Anonymous.
Behind every good revolution stands a hopeless romantic,
imagination burning with desire.

Lesson 7:

When the heart was little, it wanted to be a forest fire, then a machine.
Now, it wishes it was a liar.

Lesson 8:

The heart survives on a consistent diet of Douglas Coupland novels, henna tattoos, coffee and contact highs.
It’s still straight edge, for all intents and purposes. It just loves everything that’s bad for it, other hearts included. Don’t get it started on the minds.

Lesson 9:

The heart doesn’t want to be a metaphor. The heart thinks poetry is bullshit.

Lesson 10:

There is a reason why the heart is a heart and not a mouth.

It needs you to remember this,
that the body is just a marionette,
a mess of broken strings and mistaken arrangements at best.

Lesson 11:

If the heart could find a way to leave you behind,
to speak a language other than pump and attack and ischemia,
trust that it’d wish you nothing but serendipitous amnesia
and prosthetic lovers that fell together like furniture from Ikea.

For now, though, it has to settle for this:
a textbook existence based on studies of what to do
in case of the worst possible demise
despite the fact that no researchers have stuck around long enough
to actually observe it in the light.

Lesson 12:

There is no instruction manual for the war inside.

no such thing as a safety
when your body
is mess of ventricles just waiting to explode
into a map of the unknown,

so destroy this guide.
Swallow your pride
and let the shotgun anatomy
redefine the etymology of your survival.

Lesson 13:

Enjoy the ride.

 

 

~ Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory
via: Used Furniture Review