DEATH Poem: Vertical Sabotage, by Jasmine Aguila

I’ve never been surer: you killed my heart.
I knew of its death in bone before brain.
Such a catastrophe of sunken skin lumped
together in an upended scar, cluttered at
the center of my heart. It seems

you knew, all along, about a vertical
sabotage. It’s all over my apartment floor.
There’s a blood stain in the kitchen.
I mistook the crimson for tomato sauce.
Dotted in turmoil on the polka of my tea
towels. I’m afraid I make too much pasta.
A Carbonara maestro, if you will. Pesto basil,
a bowl of pear green, topped in oily golden
nectar, sits on the table most evenings.

This morning,
I stood stiff as a mountain. Every nerve
avalanched down my blanched skin.
Drenched in metallic sap with salt, I ended
up slipping on a bloody pulp and it heel-
toed along my foot. The heart slingshot,
lodged behind the oven, and when I
gently bent to further inspect my
heartbroken mess, just then, discerning
it was long dead.

Author: poetryfest

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