Crickets

Show me what your heart is made of, that's what I was asking every time I watched you from that mirror. Show me what your heart is made of, I'd think and think and think. Tell me it's made up of me.

Tell me you see me as so much more than I look like – too young, too female, too naive for you. Show me what your heart is made of. I don't remember thinking that while I filled my styrofoam cup of coffee in front of you, dropping in that old powdered creamer in my crushed red velvet dress. But all he did was put me on the spot, ask for my ideas when no one had ever done that before then shake his head, muttering, "You girls. You always say you want to be involved."

I don't remember Bryan Adams' CD in your hand – the one with To Really Love A Woman, but I know it was there. It was probably ten in the morning and I was already cloaked in Obsession, disappointing you, disappointing him, ready for stardust and sulfer and disappointed once more. Invited back onto that rainbow of invisibility and shame.

Show me what your heart is made of – I asked that of you, too. I asked it with hope and in despair because I needed a transfusion, but I asked the wrong person. 

You clogged my transfusion with tar.

Black, heavy guck I didn't recognize but knew I should be embarrassed I'd seen.

Show me what your heart is made of, I asked the sky but all I got was rain. That torrential rainstorm the day you died. 

Show me what your heart is made of: crickets.

Broken glass bottles on asphalt the only beauty left, the way the shards glittered under lamplight.

Show me what your heart is made of – no, don't show me. 

That's how the voice changed then. 

Don't show me because I don't know what to do with all this ugliness.