On Magpies and Messy Psyches

I am a magpie, collecting trinkets from the people I encounter.

clutched in my beak is a turn of phrase I found particularly shiny from an old college friend.

I bring to my nest a joke my father used to tell, funny without being crass, and I adopt his speech pattern as my cuckoo egg.

I claim my mother’s courage, or an echo of it.

I steal an insult once levied at me and nurture it until it eats away at me from within.

I seize slights and store them up unwittingly in my heart,

collecting injustices as easily as I do witticisms.

my heart is a nest

cluttered

cozy

painful

it beats to the rhythm of the phrase

do you remember, do you remember

and I do

every

single

thing.