How to keep breaking your own heart

First of all / it’s
easy. Make a lot / of choices. Flirt
with belonging / let yourself
forget the way you stretch and flatten, come apart
quietly / let it knock you
windless / again and again / the way you fizzle
into cosmological gut biome / undetected. Digest
good meals too quickly. Let your friends / go
when dinner ends. Move. /
Bear
children / watch
them spring like fish through your fist. Leave
your mother each winter. Compute
her mortal arithmetic. Show your work. Check
your work / again and again. /
Move. / Believe
this time / the drinking
will stop this / time / remember
last night’s fight
for the two of you. /
Start running / again / believe
this time / you’ll never
stop. / Choose
people. The same
choices / again and again / fall /
in lust with your effect on them / they won’t
want you back, but they will / admire
you, your specialness. Don’t
tell her / let her
grow old / keep your
lips / to yourself / find
no peace / in hers. Tell /
him / risk / it / wish
you hadn’t. / Pack
up your bags / zip
up your mouth and / move. You must move
before it kills you. Moving kills you. Killing you
keeps your chest / splitting
open with early summer mornings
on the road / the kind
that wipe your wisdom clean / the jostling
breeze that makes you
new before the day / comes
again to claim you.

Lindsay Clark lives in NYC with her family. Her work has recently appeared in Rust + Moth, Breakwater Review, The Shore, and elsewhere.