The heart is only a muscle,
although vital to life itself, merely
a series of chambers, functioning
in response to an electrical current,
circuitry wired for the very purpose of living.

Why is it then, that we speak of the heart
as if it the center of our spiritual being,
the fountain from which love flows
as if love and blood are one?
Why is it that even now,
as my own heart pumps obediently, I feel
an ache, ever present in the anatomical position
reserved specifically for cardiac function?
Why, at the moment that you unwillingly
let me down did I want to scream
“My heart is breaking!”
and why, as I sit longing for some word,
some touch or gesture to mend this
imaginary wound do I want to promise
‘my heart belongs to you’?

Yet what would you possibly do
with a saturated mass of meat fibers that
once removed, would only grow cold
in your hands?