The slippery red organ
Pulsated in my sweaty palm
Swells and depressions
Of perturbing veins
Pressed themselves into the crevices,
The pores, the wrinkles of an unworthy hand
A part of me recoiled
And shrunk away, repulsed
By the monster I had plucked
From the intricate knots of a visceral wasteland
Another part of me wanted nothing more
Than to spring forward
And snatch it, squeeze it
Watch in hysteric silence
As the vermillion juice oozed from the muted depths
Of those naked, helpless hollows.
I winced as I felt my grip tighten
And the crowns of my nails
Just break through the fragile lining
And begin to dig themselves into the tender meat.
Breathless,
I placed the heart upon
The bruised wood of the dumbwaiter
And in the second it took me
To let go,
I felt the heart let out a defensive shutter
And leak out a sigh of resignation
That stained the wood beneath it
A color darker and more ominous than its darkest shadow
Would Edgar Allen Poe mistake it
I asked myself
For his tell-tale heart?
I let the coarse rope of the pulley
Burn as it slid through my blood-stained hands
Would Thomas Jefferson open his dinner dumbwaiter
Tomorrow at Monticello
Only to find a beating, bleeding heart
Crouching in between his bottles of fine wine?
I cringed at the senseless blasphemy
As I condemned my heart
To the depths
To the eternal, ebony hues of the cellar.