My heart is travelling again,
Walking down my ribs like stairs,
Thumping along the floorboards,
Promenading through an empty hall and
Into a crowded room.
People bump into me
Like my heart once bumped against my chest,
And now lounges somewhere deep below
And a little to the left.
I race out of the room and into the sky,
If I am to catch my heart—
To seal it in bone,
To hide it at home,
To make it my own—
I must beat what beats in me.
Here the gardens are untended, but
There is no trace of the bloodied stars
Dripping from the chambers of my heart.
A ladder appears; it leads to the moon.
I climb.
I follow my heart. I must get it back.
Into the night, I do not look back.
The night is one empty eye,
The half-mast moon its pupil.
Pierced on the celestial bone is my heart
Bleeding stars.
And the eye twinkles.
My heart paints the galaxies
With little beads of blood
That glimmer. I wink
With my right eye, and in my left,
A reflection of the stars shimmer.
I stand on the ladder with one eye closed and
The other turned to the heavens.
Above me is my heart, below me, my home,
And inside me: billions of stars.
