HEARTS ARE TORN

As the train
leaves the station,
hearts are torn
from grief-stricken souls,

sad eyes say
it might be forever,

never uttered,
yet understood
to be true,

untethered,
the train hurtles down the tracks
toward fraught unknowns,

away from identity,
purpose,
place of being,
where hearts could rest at night
without fear of harm,

no more, no more,

now hearts are torn,
strewn along the tracks,
lodged in the cracks
of rocky, weed-choked land.

Who will collect these ravaged hearts
from the forgotten, war-torn tracks of life?

Photo and Poem by Rita Bourland