heart

a prose poem of personal images between writer and an ex-muse.

press your fingers on either side of my sternum. work your fingers under that hard bone, and pull up. push the flaps of bone and skin to either side and admire for a moment your work.

locate where the heart should be. in that cavern you will find a lock-box. the combination is 1-4-2-1. inside you will find two things. the first: an origami paper sailboat. unfold it. inside it will say "you are the most beautiful girl in the world." fold it back up. rip the sails from the boat and put them in your pocket. replace the boat in the lock-box.

notice that it still floats but it floats ugly and slowly.

the next thing you will notice is the clementine. first you will remove the skin in one coil. put the skin in your pocket with the sails. you will hold the orange gently in your hand. you will save it and you will be careful not to drop or bruise it. second you will suck the juice from it and hold it in your mouth. don't swallow. then you will take the skin from your pocket and do your best to put it back. you will do a pretty good job. but you will still have the juice in your mouth. then you will walk away leaving me open at the sternum.

after awhile the citrus juice will burn your mouth and you will find the clementine sitting still on the lock-box, and you will spit the juices back to that fruit.

gladly it will soak them up.

gladly it will again fit in your palm.


you will tell it to trust that eventually it will trust you again. you will stitch the skin back together with embroidery thread. the clementine is better than ever before. the clementine is fixed, mostly.

next, from fear, you will rip the skin away to test if the juices, your combined spit and the citrus of that fruit are still intact. they are.

lastly, always in fear, you will take the skin and throw it away. resting on the lock-box, the clementine rots, infecting its surroundings in my still-open breast.

inside where my heart was is a lock-box. the combination is 1-4-2-1. inside you will find two things: a sailboat without sails, and the smell of decayed fruit.