& there are nails attached, digging into the soft
tender part of your palm: because of course you took it,
of course you did. there were never any other options, here,
only more of the same with colored labels, but this-
this is your heart! and it’s hurting
your hand to hold it here, under fluorescent
lights that buzz, laughing at your fortune from above,
modern gargoyles at their perch, grinning down at we
not-stone folk, so concerned with the materials we are,
have never eroded completely and become something else.
How silly we must seem, handing hearts for pocket change
in a Kroger line.
maybe more like ghosts instead, giggling at the story-line
only they can see. maybe they know where the nails
in your heart came from.
maybe they know something you don’t.
piercing the skin of your hand and dripping droplets fat
and bejeweled onto the vinyl floor, the off-white vinyl tile
with flecks of pale color, square and repetitive, that covers
every aisle. distant cart wheels squeal around a corner.
there’s a queue forming.
pull out your wallet and the clerk tells you that isn’t necessary,
so you grimace and bear your teeth in a smile,
a paradigm of gratitude; one that shifts, ever so slightly,
and pumps once in the palm of your hand.
