We fill the holes in our hearts with trash.

We staunch the bleeding with cigarette butts, embers still beating; we course the acrid filters with tiny pleasures, borrowing joy from the morning-after to get through each night.

We dress those crude heartings with newspaper, stung by stale vinegar and tabloid ire. We trace bone-cold fingers against the frayed edges of our flesh, where the nerves jangle and spark.

And each day, They open new wounds.

We ask Those Who Wound Us to stop cutting.

We beg Them, “Just a moment’s relief, for our hearts to heal”.

And They say, “Look at yourselves: filthy, smeared with blood and tar, stinking of the night before.”

We show Them our hearts, and they recoil. “How does your heart beat at all,” They say, “your ventricles thronged with refuse?

“How does your pulse rage, ragged and misbegotten, your arteries defiled so?”

“Heal our hearts,” we plead, one last time, for we know it is within Their power to grant.

“Let us fill them, let us be whole, let our lives not seep from the piercings of our breast!”

They mutter as They scrutinise the holes in our hearts, the slivers of smartphone glass pinning our makeshift dressings in place. They scowl at the tiny pleasures hearting our flesh, the joys amidst our sinews girding us for each new step.

“We know how to fix this,” They say.

“Your hearts will never heal amidst such filth,” They say. “We must banish these impurities. We will pull the slivers from your hearts, prohibit the borrowing of joy. Never more shall you suffer the morning-after.

“If trash is forbidden, you will not fill your hearts with it.”

Now our hearts weep freely. There is no staunching the flow; there is no relief from the punctures They inflict, day by day.

And now when They see us, they judge us for bleeding.