She said the only
way to win a girl’s
heart was to annihilate
it, to crush it into
moon rocks and broken
melodies, obliterate it
with the quip of a well
placed tongue.

A girl’s heart, she said,
was the equivalent of
a paper swan, of the soft
inside of an elbow, of the
bruises that lined her inner
thighs, small pieces of a 
memory kept at the base of
her spine, secrets that lived
unnoticed in the quivers of
her palms.

The only way to
win a girl’s heart,
she said, is to annihilate
it, one silver shred
at a time.