We Are The Hearts We Draw
by Weston Cutter
fast and with uneven lines all around, hearts
hairy with extra pencil bits and cockeyed, un-
balanced as the way we feel when anyone says
we’re beautiful, beautiful, it’s not the light
nor night nor the five pints of whatever’s
cheap. And no one wants to admit that the shape
which comes before our names can mean
what it does but we’re slaves to the lopsiders
we (willing or not) transmit even if we’re all deep
-down suckers for the plump+round ones
we learned (4th grade) to draw, sitting between
the Sarahs (K and B) in Ms. Benson’s classroom.
We’re suckers for the hearts we wish to draw
but can’t or won’t through insistence or fear,
habit or worse, and so we draw the hearts we see
ourselves loving with. And those we crave:
stockholders tracking daily trades on the guts’s
big board, gauging the ticker as shares of HRTS
go up in green down in red and we’re most beautiful
in our gloom at the bottom, someone stop the loss
and the red’s spilt everywhere—we’re worth
our most just before the rally: we’re what to buy
when the hearts we draw are barely hearts, are
dizzy-sketched jags of want and oh please just fucking
work this time. Phones jangling + someone’s shouting sell—
or is that a name? We go redder + become
the very best bet when we’ve forgotten
how the heart was ever supposed to look. When we’ve
forgotten how to draw and so begin to draw. Heart
as lollipop, as mitten, as handcuff, as tree leaf
in autumn—a heart is a rose is a red blink
of number, value sinking: we draw ourselves,
the biggest risks: we’re what’s traded fastest
and snapped up as soon as there’s nowhere
our blushing and misshaped value can go but up.
