Cardiac

Not so much the blueprint, as its evidence. Not its four chambers, high beamed atriums more gothic than baroque. Not the arteries, hauling blue freight. Less pomegranate, more its eight dozen rubies,

    unhidden if you’re good with a knife. Heart with its headache. With its own set of vowels, its ratifying pulse:

  be-cause—be-cause—be-cause. Bucket of honey heart, fish-naked heart, heart wrapped fast in the dirty sheets

      of its body. Heart pinned and sightless—a fly in cupped hands. Arrhythmic heart, the extra beats chasing around inside it like a squirrel. Heart with its phantom limb, its pimples and headgear. Apiary heart. Spooked-horse heart. Heart like a pink moon risen high

        in the chest. Heart at half-mast. Carton of milk heart, that sweats and sours in the heat. Heart with its spreadsheets and penniless laugh. Heart ringing

        off the hook. A light-rain heart. A rub-some-dirt-on-it heart. Revving heart, all rotor hum and easy reverse, sparks gathered in its arms like arrows, turning around until the body must, too. A come-

        no-closer heart. Runaway heart praying like hell that it’s followed. Unknowable, unlikable heart. It could be anything in there, sealed as it is, in such a darkness.