by Neil Carpathios
I sleep and my heart stays awake:
it looks out through the bars of my ribs,
through meat, bones, skin,
with x-ray eyes.
It is looking for something to feed it,
even now, despite a whole day’s gorging
on my beautiful children, the woman breathing
rhythmically at my side, memories and the aftershock
of memories, clouds, trees, birds.
Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night
and catch it in the act. It says it’s sorry,
but I know the heart is a liar and will wait
for as long as it takes for me to drift off again.
