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The doctors say
I have a hole in my heart
And maybe that is why
I feel the way I feel so hurt,
My chest tightens,
And this strange life-giving thing palpitates,
And every word that is said
Seems to echo
Within me,
And when I lose another,
The hole seems to open, even more,
Allowing the blood gushing
To move between the chambers
Like the tide changing,
Sweeping through the hole as through
Crevices in some deep-sea ocean rocks.
It is said, that perihelion is the point closest
To the sun during a planet’s orbit,
And aphelion the point farthest away,
And in my heart these orbiting distances
Are what cause the beating
That keeps me spinning,
Because when I lie so very still
And am so certain
That I am hiding in safety
From ghastly memory’s demons,
My heart betrays me by calling out,
Female to male,
Like Tumbadora to Conga,
Beating forth and back one Conguero to another
Such horrific stories,
It is then, when my heart
Is violently beating and pulsing and shaking
Like the dancers of Black Orpheus
Through the streets of Rio de Janeiro,
That it wears its mask for the dead
And questions its living.
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