What is this bomb ticking in my hands?
Why is a heart beating, bleeding in my hands?
It’s counting beats down to an explosion
Emptying itself, filling my room, flooding my room
The heart’s gushing, the blood splashes against me
Horror and then more as I realize
It’s my heart
Finally the flow dwindles and the final beat comes
And the explosion awakens me
In bed, in darkness, grasping at my chest, gasping
Calming down, as I feel the beats within my core
Lying down, letting the breaths sync up to the song
Don’t be afraid
And now I close my eyes
My brain expands, the wrinkles separate and stretch
And become walls and a maze. The mouse sets off
Systematic, I proceed until I hit a wall
Why was my heart a bomb?
I turn right and proceed
Why wouldn’t I let go?
I hit a wall again, a dead end
No, I can feel an answer on the other side
A sonorous rumble
The wall is warm and soft
Will it hurt to go through it?
I look down and my hand is now a blade
Teeth clenched, brow knit, I thrust my hand through the wall
Like a breaking dam, I’m awash in red, choking
And then the blood subsides
The gray walls are now half red
I walk through once the shock, too, subsides
I feel lighter as I walk into the hidden room
And then heavier as I realize my heart is missing
Another dream?
But there it is, on the floor in the middle of the room
I hesitate for a moment and then pick it up
It’s empty. It’s not beating. It already went off.
One of me is holding a dead heart, and the other stares
More questions fill the room in a blinding noise
I approach myself and before I even formulate the question
I answer “I have no answers
But that’s not your heart”
In my bloody hands there is a book
The blood on my hands, on the book’s cover fades into it
I open it and the letters form a chain
The chain crawls out from the book and wraps itself around
my hands
My arms, my neck, my chest and then my whole body
The book has vanished and the words ignite
My skin in flames, words searing every inch of me
Eventually the pain dies down, the flames still there
But cool and white instead of ink black
I see myself, enveloped in white fire
My legs are still blood-soaked
I see my face covered in glowing letters
My hands are still shaking from the bomb
Intact but dripping from the heart
“I’ve done a poor job”
“We all make mistakes”
“I’m going to stay”
“I know. It’s the only choice”
“what do you make of the heart?”
“I would say it’s what you want
But as it empties you realize
The ends are going to come regardless
So you hold it and wait
And see it die without knowing
That in dying, you regain it”
