The City She Was

Pageant of Scrutiny

15 Bleeding Heart My heart is bleeding. It bleeds upward and fills my mouth up with salt. It bleeds because of a city in ruins, the chair still warm from sister’s body, because it will all be irreproducible. My heart is bleeding because of baby bear not finding mama bear and it bleeds to the tips of my fingers like I painted my nails Crimson. Sometimes my heart bleeds so much I am a raisin. It bleeds until I am a quivering ragged clot, bleeds at the ending with the heroine and her sunken cancer eyes, at the ending with the plaintive flute over smoke-choked killing fields. I’m bleeding a river of blood right now and it’s wearing a culvert in me for the blood. My heart rises up in me, becomes the cork of me and I choke on it. I am bleeding for you and for me and for the tiny babies and the ied-blown leg. It bleeds because I’m made that way, all filled up with blood, my sloppy heart a sponge filled with blood to squeeze onto any circumstance. Because it is mine, it will always bleed. My heart bled today. It bled onto the streets and the steps of city hall. It bled in the pizza parlor with the useless jukebox. I’ve got so much blood to give inside and outside of any milieu. Even for a bad zoning decision, I’ll bleed so much you’ll be bleeding, all of us bleeding in and out like it’s breathing, or kissing, and because it is righteous and terrible and red. ...