By Laurel Streed

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As I stood on the banks of a root beer-colored lake, a piece of my heart chipped off and sank through iron-rich water. The faint orange glow flickered out long before it hit the bottom.

“Time to go,” Mother said, clasping my hand. 

“Wait! I want to stay. Look.” I pointed at the rest of my heart, now clearly broken. “I have to look for the piece that fell.”

“That’s how it goes when you love something hard enough.” Mother shrugged. “That bit is long gone. See?”

She pulled open her chest to reveal her own heart. The blue was dull and dusty, with so many bits missing it resembled the hollow inside of a geode.

“You give and give, and people take and take,” she scoffed.

“No one ever gives you anything back?”

Then she smiled and stroked my hair. “Children do. You’ll understand when you have your own.”

I was careful after that. However, I learned too late that it wasn’t only places that chipped my heart, but people too. I traded away bits to classmates like Pokémon cards or school photos. Some took them greedily, never to return them. Others borrowed my pieces before politely handing them back warped and faded. When my brother went off to college, I sent him on his way with a massive slab to remember me, knowing he would return it once he graduated. Each time he visited home, he offered pebbles of it back, and when I tried to integrate them back into my heart, they were too small and Plinkoed out of my chest.

I got careless as I got older, and more pieces broke off across the Pacific Northwest. They burrowed under ferns, scattered along the salt-crusted coast, and hid out on the top of Mount Rainier. When my family moved, I misplaced a giant, painful hunk in a big house nestled in farmland. I lost another on the main street of my college town, disguising its crystalline self as ice in a drink at the bar.

It hurt, leaving parts of myself behind, and there was never a way to retrieve them. Those bright orange shards were always gone for good, and it made me wonder how much more I could afford to lose before I was scattered to the wind, empty and unrecognizable. Like Mother.

I considered sealing my heart in duct tape and plastic bags to keep it whole. 

Acquaintances clawed at my chest, desperate to grab pieces for themselves. “If I tell you a secret, can I have one?” they whispered over coffee. I shoved them away.

Things finally started to change after I met someone who never asked for my color but rather gave away heaps of her own pale blue without hesitation. It was a way to fill the holes, so with careful precision, I sewed the new shade into my chest. I didn’t know then how strong the stitching would be.

I met a boy with chunks of his heart missing too. He offered me one of his giant jagged greens, like malachite, and I offered back a large rough orange. An even trade was safe, and I loved how his color looked next to mine, like two gemstones clustered in the same ring setting. Then one day, the boy wanted it returned, so I took a chisel to my chest, scraped it free, and handed it back.

When I adopted a wriggling black kitten, his heart was only splintered after being separated from his litter, but it glowed gold once he settled into our new home. He filled my cracks like kintsugi, dripping metallic sunshine over me so my heart swelled aurelian. 

I made a risky move by crossing state lines, moving truck in tow. I panicked as several more fragments stayed behind as if tossed out the car window. They retreated behind red rocks and lodged themselves behind the closest saguaro, and I scrambled through the dirt to find them. My fingers dug into the gravel, searching searching searching. In defeat, I remembered what Mother said and knew they were long gone. I managed to find solace knowing they would always be there, cemented like fossils. I could feel them one state over, missing them dearly, and waved. 

As I stood alone in the sand of a distant shore, the sun dipped low on the horizon and the sky winked fuchsia. Something in the surf caught my eye, like sea glass. I bent into the foam to inspect the vibrant teal shard. It felt like other pieces, warm and smooth. By holding it to my chest, the teal connected with my orange like a magical puzzle, and I smiled, finally starting to feel put back together.

Determined to make myself whole, I didn’t stop until I filled every last empty pocket. I spent a decade collecting. I scaled mountain cliffs, side pulling to reach scattered pieces hidden like gems; I fucked strangers in the dark, and while they whispered my name I slipped their multifaceted fragments into my pockets; I swam out to an island and plucked a pearlescent white lodged inside a conch; all the while, wondering why Mother never did the same.

At last, I stood at the water’s edge with my niece, staring into the roaring saltwater when a wedge of the little girl’s heart fractured and fell into the sand. With a gasp, she watched the pale pink be taken by the waves before scrambling on her hands and knees to find it.

I took her hand. “It’s okay. See?”

Now, my heart was a collection of motley prisms, assembled like stained glass—the blues, pinks, silvers, golds, and greens patterned into a mosaic. 

My niece stared in awe. “It’s a rainbow.”

“One day, yours might look like this, too.”

“How?” she asked.

I grinned, proud of all the patchwork I had done. “I’ll show you.”