And Heart

Heart is a

Hole that buries itself deeper year after year and heart is a

Soundproof urn and heart is the

Thread spun from shed hair we collect in the corners of the living room, from under chairs and heart is a

Vocabulary we use to avoid thinking about anything and heart is the

Mark left on the heart by a greater heart we forgot about because it was so great and heart is the

Closet full of clothes once we’re dead and gone, stillborn shapes of ever-passing tense, and heart

Won’t let the blood flow free but stops it over and over again, all these little deaths describing the difference

that defines heart, and heart is

Adjusting one’s hunger threshold in order to feel evening coolness again and heart

Scopes the horizon for horses bearing Bad News, and heart is an

Ocean’s volume, islands of garbage here, shipwrecked doubloons there, and heart is

All in the head, and heart

Won’t let the hands calm the scared child, and heart

Won’t hold the worst words in, and heart

Won’t settle, not without the blood’s litigation, and heart

Won’t hope for a single thing for fear of jinxing what it hopes for, and heart

Forgets itself, rises up when the moon’s bright, and heart

Hears every sound the houses utter of roiling hearts inside, and heart is a

Pulled tooth carved into a tiny heart, and heart is a

Hand-drawn map of a dreamt-of place, and heart is the

Tune we cannot sing and heart is

The garbage the dog cannot help but taste and heart is the

Mirror image we’ve grown so used to we’re blind to and heart is the

Carnage on the side of the highway which has a name and whose names we write in hearts and heart is a

Passage between two moments, the first was what we thought was becoming true and the second is what it

turned out really was, that heart

Meant nothing except stillness accepting a stillness, so silence mutes the mouth against some urge to say