pincushion paperweight heart

I was feeling restless, like I wanted to die,
but also like I wanted another biscuit with jam on
(''to soften it, darling, they’re a little bit stale.'')
-My aunt Ivy with lipstick on her teeth,
her voice crackling like a static radio.

I tried to write a poem, but instead
wrote his name on my palm in fountain pen,
watching the ink bleed slowly into the cracks,
and considered baking a batch of cinnamon rolls.
Then I read the first three pages of four different books,
(Waugh, Bukowski, Vonnegut, Nin),
drank half a cup of black coffee and rolled
a cigarette but lost it somewhere amongst the fibres of
the shag pile rug.
I think Audrey ate it. (Dog. Black cocker spaniel).

I was feeling so bloody restless,
my hands were like fluttering sheets of paper
in the wind, held partially down by the heavy glass paperweight
of my heart.

I made myself a new plaid dress
with puffed sleeves, mint green
(an old vintage pattern
Ivy’s-baking parchment-crinkly skin).
Was sticking pins in my bra as I went,
then one shoulder came out higher than the other like an oddly
baked cream-puff.
I wore it anyway and spent all day feeling insecure,
shrugging the backs of my hands to my ears,
with my arms crossed over my chest like a young girl
awkward about her newly swelling lopsided
body.

I thought how funny it would be if I could whip back in time, six years
like Billy Pilgrim (I read enough of Vonnegut to know)
and find myself, fourteen and a late developer
with one breast bigger than the other,
the left one,
a perfect cushion for a vulnerable heart.

I’d suck thoughtfully on a cigarette; all wise like, and tell her;
''Trust me, baby, you’re going to need all the padding you can get.
We’re the reason unrequited love exists, doll. At least pin cushions don’t shatter
like paperweights.''