Reparamus

He gave her a bracelet with a heart-shaped box, and filled it with a promise she knew wouldn't be kept. But she smiled, and wore it on her sleeve, just because hope is a beautiful thing.

Before too long, the heart had a broken clasp, and the box swung open, spilling his un-retainable promise on a random spit of unidentifiable ground. Her empty, broken heart dangled for all to see.

But still she wore it, day and night, treasuring it with the naivete that dictates that mourning can sometimes fix things. She got to the point where she no longer noticed it, and behaved as though it were perfectly normal to have a broken heart, hollow and gaping like a wound, showing just beyond her sleeve.

However, there were times she'd catch sight of it, and remember him and his long-gone promise that neither he nor she could keep. She would stop, and stare, eyes glazing over as they bored holes into the not-so-distant past.

One day, she found there were more holes than memories, and she snapped.

She plucked her broken heart from her sleeve, crumpling the empty box into the bracelet, stuffing all the holes in the past with his missing promise, and threw it all against the wall. She swallowed back tears, and she let the damnable mess lay, all tangled up in complications, where it had fallen.

It was not she who picked up the pieces, but a boy.

He knelt on the floor, and extricated the broken heart from all that threatened to choke it, consume it, drown it, make it as un-retainable as the promise that once filled it. He took it to his workbench, and with a small smile and a pair of pliers, fixed the clasp.

Then, face serious, he offered her back her heart, no longer whole, but now unbroken.

With a look of wonder and a whispered expression of gratitude, she accepted the bracelet.

She wears her empty heart on her sleeve.

(The next promise she receives, she'll keep.)