Naked Hearts is a compilation of the written word bridled in the pain, anxieties, and happiness of falling in and out of love. These collections of prose and poems beg for the reader's sympathy and push others to remember moments they'd rather forget. Moments that made their heart break and ache.
Naked Hearts is a compilation of the written word bridled in the pain, anxieties, and happiness of falling in and out of love. These collections of prose and poems beg for the reader's sympathy and push others to remember moments they'd rather forget. Moments that made their heart break and ache.
The night was quiet until you walked in.
Then there was that fierce, internal pounding that arose in the wake of your presence.
In a wave of faces, I find you in a heartbeat. In a space as vast as the ocean, I feel you as though you are right beside me.
I turn away and focus on ignoring you and the troubles you bring.
You’re getting closer to me, and I want to run, but your voice keeps me in a trance.
You are talking to everyone but me and I'm keenly aware of that fact.
You're not making it easy.
I pretend you aren't right there where I can breathe you
in.
I'm sorry, did you say something? I was too busy playing indifferent.
You are smiling and your eyes sparkle.
Don't look my way and spare me my peace.
   You're laughing, and my heart trembles.
  You didn't even have to turn my way to cause the trouble.
So, it begins.
You've thrown my body into turmoil.
My eyes find you even when I'm unwilling.
My heart is defying reason.
I don't love you.
I look away and my body revolts; madness leads the rebellion.
My mind is filled with only the sight of you; I can wonder only about you.
I shouldn't listen to the drumming in my chest. I'd rather remain in a bliss of ignorance and lies than undergo this test.
Your eyes hold mine captive across the room; you’ve finally caught me stealing a look in your direction.
The walls of defenses built over time come crumbling in one instant, baring my vulnerability before you.
I'm frozen in agony because you looked my way.
You're filling me with fantasies that only fill me with tears.
The false hope in every stolen glance, the casual throw of your smile,
the truant graze of your hand—they'll only break me down.
I've been here before and even then, you didn't know. You still don't know.
I didn't want you to know.
I didn't want you to know in case you'd want my love in return.
I don't want to love you.
I can't love you when all you do is make me wish I was where you are.
My mind is wrapped in a cloak of deceit because you make me crazy with a desire.
I'm fighting to remain unaffected by all that is you.
And yet, for once, I wish to be free to feel what I do. Just for one day, I want to hold you and utter the words with the power to destroy me.
I want to love you.
I want to be your breath.
I want to be the air that surrounds you.
I want to be the rays that fall on your skin in the day, to be the stars that you wish upon on a night like this.
If I could be the one you woke up to, and the one you fell asleep beside.
If only...
I want...
I wish...
You make me ache with a need that I cannot control.
I love you.
I won't have it any other way. I tried.
Saying that I didn't only made me need you more. Yes, I love you.
Fill me up,
break me open, pull me down,
tear me apart,
shatter my heart,
be the end of me.
Be the death of me...Â
Be my everything,
I won't have it any other way. I can't help but love you again.
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Naked Hearts by Miss Brew is a collection of short-line verse poetry and prose poetry that experiments with formatting. Miss Brew exposes readers to different perspectives of falling in love and losing their lover. This book tells the tales of lovers as the love runs out in a toxic relationship, someone who's lovesick and trying to forget, another person doing their best to get into a relationship with their best friend, and someone trying to break up with their lover. The last section is especially heartbreaking to read after the third one. The illustrations are reminiscent of ink brush paintings and resonate with the poetry in how they convey a lot of emotion with very little information. While the art is not placed in a way that feels directly correlated to the poems they are found near the illustrations and are well used in this book as they convey similar feelings as the poetry.
Miss Brew experiments with the formatting in Naked Hearts to aid in conveying feelings of emptiness, heartbreak, and apathy. Text size, kerning, line spacing, and how the pages are utilized are not standardized. These aspects work together with the poetry and leave a strong impression. The illustrations use light and darkness to convey separation and the speaker's struggles. This collection does exactly what it intends, moving the readers to remember past relationships and feel the emotions that come with that and therefore how far they've come from that place.
Although this collection is remarkably successful in intention the poems tell more than they show. While the majority of poems in this collection have a running narration to create a storyline and use the formatting to make up for where the imagery falls short, these poems could be improved upon with the use of more figurative language to become even stronger and more emotional poetry. The art also could have been placed or created with more intention to support the storyline. While the formatting is a strong aspect of this collection it is not used in a way that makes it easy to separate sections from each other.
Overall, though, Naked Hearts is a successful tale of romantic relationships and how they can fall apart and come together and how to get through that. The art successfully conveys these same feelings. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy love poetry, poetry on heartbreak and how to recover from it, and to people who enjoy reading about relationships in general. One of the stories in this collection reads very sapphic so there are also LBGTQ+ undertones to this collection.Â