How to Mend a Broken Heart
by JC Reilly
First, collect all the synonyms you can think of for broken: busted, fissured, ruptured, smashed,
crumbled, tattered, shredded, cracked. There are more. Find them. They may crouch under the
couch, mildew in a pair of stinky All-Stars, cram a jar of crunchy peanut butter, crawl along the
west wall in your garden where the night-blooming jasmine flourishes, sway in the branches of
the oak tree where a pair of squirrels chase each other, creep like ants at the foot of Flournoy
Hill, where the two of you lay in switchgrass and dandelions and watch the clouds shift into
rabbits or sailboats, swirl like the onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, which reminds you of
Dairy Queen, of the time you licked white, cold sweetness off each other’s noses, that silly ice
cream duel, and the downpour that started right as you left, and how, even soaked as a runaway
river, you couldn’t stop laughing, swept away in laughter, the wet no more a nuisance than an
eyelash. Have you found them? Yes? Stuff them into the pocket of your jeans and throw them
into a wash. What comes out of the dryer: a clean pair of jeans and a ball of frayed paper whose
ink has disappeared with the Tide. Throw it out, or throw it to the cat to play with, but it’s
nothing. And your heart? Whole again, little melon in your chest, to keep or give as you will.
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