Heartfelt

I'm supposed to share a poem for my poetry class. With someone...anyone. So I decided to share it with the whole WORLD! Or at least the blogosphere. I wrote this last week, and it has some similarities to another poem I wrote a few years ago about a heart, but which I haven't posted here, so a mention of the parallel is irrelevant here. The point is I like this poem's personality too, and its message, which is completely different from that other poem I wrote that's similar in structure but not in meaning. So here it is. 

(I feel like the ending is a little anti-climax/oversentimental...meh. That whole last stanza needs polishing. I'll keep working on it.)

 

The Heart

I am filled with light

and blood.

I am tireless.

Ceaseless.

Unrelenting.

With each contraction

I fill you with life

and take into myself

the dregs of blood,

wearied from their

58-second journey.

I wait for the day

when I shudder

and tighten.

When, rigid,

I let the blood trickle in

and rest.

There are names written into my walls,

carved on my stony altars.

The graffiti of one born straddling a grave.

Here is “God” and there is “strawberries”

and here is “Jacob.”

“Jason Willmore holding his little sister.”

“Playmill” and “Kirby Sentria Home Care System.”

“Baby Molly.”

I am aged with the etching

of words.

I began my life before you did

and in the end,

the words written on my fleshy tables

define you more

than my steady rhythmic thump.