英文诗词:Sacred Heart

阿林

英文诗词:Sacred Heart

  by Lee Briccetti

  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.