Fragments

by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Huntington Valley, PA)

When someone breaks your heart
Into a thousand pieces
Toss a handful
Into the night sky
To shine like stars
Counted by lovers
Whose hearts have yet to be broken.

Plant them in places
Where nothing grows.
Barren as Hannah’s womb
But pregnant with possibilities of new life.
Gifts of unexpected miracles.

Slip them into the backpacks of strangers
The shopping carts of homeless men
Battered women
And abandoned children.
Anonymous blessings
To ease their journeys.

And take the last, most precious fragments
Of your once heart
And offer them to the one who broke it
To accept or reject.
It’s out of your hands.
But offer you must.
It’s what we do
In these days of endings and beginnings.

Natalie Zellat Dyen is a freelance writer and photographer living in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, The Willow Review, Global Woman Magazine, Intercom Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and other newspapers and journals. She is currently working on a novel. Links to Natalie’s published work are available at www.nataliewrites.com.