The Heart is a Crime Scene

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Forget
everything you know about yourself
if you want to learn about love
or it’ll school you the hard way.
Go into it thinking I’ve got this
and be shocked when it sprouts horns
and furry pants
leaving cloven-hoofed prints
on the good couch.

What will you do with your heart?
You could try to hide it
like crime scene evidence:
the red flare of blood that pulses
through every word and threatens
to burst the fragile membrane between
what you say and what you wish
you had the guts to say.

Any sane person will tell you:
put a muzzle on your love.
Don’t do the first thing it commands
because it might be wrong
and what stories will they tell
about you then?
That you live by the heart?
But how? It’s a crime scene.
The authorities taped it off long ago.