The Heart that Fell Asleep

I don't like to think that my heart stopped beating

on the night when the blanket wouldn't warm up and the moonless night seemed especially suffocating.

I like to think that all it did was tuck itself into a nice, warm bed on the forest floor beneath my lungs, 

listening to the two tall trees whisper endlessly to each other, while the rest of the woods slowly bent down and decayed into the earth.

A heart that fell asleep imagining how beautiful a sunset would be on Jupiter. Just as the sun kissed the horizon goodnight, the swirling gases would lift the heart out of the atmosphere and it would float away from the sun, to other stars, other planets, other solar systems, other galaxies.

Anywhere that wasn't the crumbling city beneath my flesh. 

My heart floated to the edge of the universe, reaching out to shake the hand of the friendly nothingness surounding it, when suddenly it fell. It plummeted, and the stars whirled past it as if they were the lights on a million high speed trains.

It landed straight into its bed on the forest floor, and woke up. It was too dissapointed to fall back asleep. 

But now it knows that it will shake hands with the friendly nothingness one day, 

and when it does, there will be a smile on its lips.