She’s building a barrier of toys.  It wraps around her like a curtain wall, Barbies and blocks making a mockery of medieval fortifications.  Her eyes are a stormy grey and her hair is corn-silk on her chubby childish shoulders.  When she runs out of materials she builds the walls higher with her eyes.  
Five years run by like oil on water.  The little girl has ballooned; her walls are fat and self-hatred.  She fires sarcastic missiles at any who venture near.  She doesn’t argue when they say she has a concrete heart.  She wishes it would fall out of her repulsive breast, take her mutinous lungs with.  
She’s in the arms of a dreadlocked girl.  She has reason to care about herself again.  She wants to be beautiful for this girl.  
With craft hardened hands, her beloved friend peels back the layers of pain and distrust.  She learns to be touched, she learns to love, her heart replaces scar tissue with new healthy muscle.  She is in love.  She can think of nothing but the girl who quietly, gently opened her up.
She is sobbing in her bedroom.  No one can know.  It was stupid.  She tells herself this to keep her claws clinging to the edge of sanity.  Her blood is cold and she is burning those fateful few diary pages she wrote.  The flames catch on her heart and leave a tracing of pain.
She lives with the scars.  She is still in her gentle friend's arms.  It is harder now; every touch leaves a prickle of sorrow.  She dotes like a beaten puppy.  The dreadlocked girl still holds her with quiet fortitude.
She’s hating herself.  It’s all her fault and she is a bitch.  She tells herself this to explain the hatred and confusion.  She tells herself this so she won’t have to think about her mother’s smug face.  She feels her heart hardening again.
She likes him cautiously.  Falls for his dance moves and gentlemanly behaviour.  He is smart, so is she.  This turns out to be the reason he hates her.  She gets out the gravel and lime.
Pouring concrete he finds her and leads her out of her fortress.  She holds her clothes tightly to her.  She pours her heart out in words.  He collects her offerings, his eyes and actions give her hope.  The words he doesn't say tell her what she needs to hear.  Once more the walls fall.  She steps beyond them and hands her battered heart to him.  He gives it to his girlfriend -- a prize: the heart of a monster.  She’s building walls again.
She’s run out of concrete and the toys have been taken away.  She blinds herself with a haze of hard liquor and cowers in her room.  It’s all she has.  Hallways are dangerous, filled with whores and eyes.  
They tell her not to give up but she knows.
She’s digging into the earth this time.  She’s digging a deep dark hole for her heart.  The poor thing smells of stomach acid and sick, it's gouged and scarred.  She clutches it to her empty chest feeling its last desperate beats -- its gentle swan song poured out in a final gout of love and blood.
This is what jewellery boxes are for.