Sacred Heart

Even as a girl I knew the heart was not a valentine;

it was wet, like a leopard frog on a lily pad,

had long tube roots

anchoring it in place.

And smaller roots like lupine and marigold

and bleeding hearts’ roots I traced with my finger

while transplanting in the garden.

Jesus had a thousand bloody hearts

planted in our flowerbeds beneath pink flowers;

they could see us through the ground.

I had a book about a girl who lived in the earth

near the tree roots, who cut off her finger

and used it as a key.  I wondered if I could love like that.

I studied the painting of His chest peeled back

to show light around the Sacred Heart.

And in the bedroom at my grandmother’s where I slept

against the trees, I was the spirit 

inside the room’s heart, my life inside me,

something that could leave through the window quietly.

I heard the fibrous closing and closing

inside my body and prayed to stay alive.