How many dictionaries’
worth of words have
we exchanged and they
taught me nothing, I
know now, having just
committed the whites
of your eyes, the nonsense
you uttered, to memory
as we waited for the
ambulance to come,
as I waited. Now some
technician brandishing her
wand stands witness
to an architecture
that ought to remain
hidden, yours to
disclose to none or
one—yet here onscreen
it materializes. Now I’m
the one who can’t
breathe, it’s so
beautiful, my God: Venus
flytrap gulping its
blood meal, cathedral
arches in cross-
section buttressed
by lung, flaps of the mitral
valve high-fiving, over.
And over. And over. So
this is your
heart: object of long
study. Only now,
staring down the double
barrel as it loads
and fires, loads
and fires, words
having failed us both, do
I know it fully.
