TRAGIC Poem: And I Bear the Brunt of It All (in the shadows), by Cole Zimmerman

My friends told me you keep my heart in a birdcage
bring it out at dinner parties
poke and prod it until it performs tricks

I suppose I had been wondering how you’d been treating it.
thought maybe in a room down the hall, propped up on pillows with a
thermometer helplessly dangling out of the aorta
thought maybe you’d keep the curtains drawn for it, wait a bit before prying it out of the sheets
I guess you lost the last strands of your patience.

They said it looked almost pink, about the color of an artificially dyed salmon
that the outside had started to shrivel up like my pruney fingers on the shower floor.
They said all you could talk about was its quiet uselessness,
your arduous task of caring for it, your noble cause in fixing it.
Ha ha. So noble. Ha ha.

It sung for you once, is that the reason?
still soft with hope, still pumping blood at the rhythm of footfalls on a crowded staircase, still
slyly spreading its veins, still so beautiful and so blissfully red you said it reminded you of roses

I suppose I’d be less angry if once you were alone with it you shut it away and forgot about it.
But each night, I feel the afterglow of your rough fingers combing out the arteries, whispers of
hollow encouragement I blame on the wind, and then that all consuming ache in my chest
as you pound and pound it in eventual frustration
trying to get it to beat again.