Poetry
Love Poem No. 9
I have stolen the heart out of your chest. It beat
on my bed for days, where I let it run itself
out. It wasn’t red, but brown, turning deeper so
as it lay and rot. I stole the heart; I think, how cliché,
how Poe, how macabre. How odd it looks,
so like a river outside of its home
between the lungs. (Ah, skin
you keep our organs in.) I want to scribble its letters,
slip them under the bedroom door. I no longer care
to visit, but what to write, “So sorry
I killed you dead”? You didn’t think
I could cause such pain—my face like a doll’s, my hair
so fine, my elegant hands—but I tell you, I reached
in. I reached right in, and my boat sailed over the edge,
slicing us a fleeting wake.