I love you but I would never put my heart in your back pocket. I know it’d end up creased and crumpled up, crushed carelessly into a cold cloth corner alongside scrap paper and discarded receipts, these roommates, residents relegated to long-term tenancy, rarely resurfacing. I know it’d wind up whirling through the wash, tingeing white work shirts pale pink with the ink of my organ, bleeding like a busted ballpoint pen, when you, finally fallible, forget, slipping off your slacks so swiftly, cramming them haphazardly into the hamper. I know how the coins come to collect in the cracks of couch cushions. They slip straight through the split seams of your back pockets, popped stitches through which the slippery membranes of my muscle might just slide, arriving at the same unfortunate end. I know the silver chain that hangs, thin links clinking coldly, securing safely inside a warm, well-worn wallet of cow hide. If I put my heart in your back pocket, would you chain it up too? Like leather left to dry, dying in dark washed denim? I don’t know that I’d want you to. But if you didn’t, a part of me would always wonder: Was it not valuable enough?
