i left her on the side of the road near the rookery in southern indiana. her body was still warm, not as warm as the time she told me she wished she had a thousand teeth but not yet as cold as the time she grew them all at once and stuck them in me. she taught me many things, like how to forget and how to see through the cataracts and necrosis. she kissed my face and told me i was beautiful and boiled me in a metal bin inside the barn and watched as my skin separated from my bones as easily as slicing butter. she assured me i looked prettier this way, all bones and flaying meat and a thousand little exposed teeth i had no idea were in me.

an average human creature should such a mythical exist
in a lifetime will celebrate about 2,200,000,000 heartbeats,
billions of heartbeats per minute (I prefer moment)
but like everything so essence human there are
those very few heartbeat moments,
the ten or twenty maybe forty total in a lifetime
that you total truly remember,
recalling the cream and sauce,
swell and the hell,
of the pounding so slow so hard,
each one a volcano of
a moment until that day
you don't remember-anything

when she said yes and you're shaking and beating in a
*****-tonk rhythm cause you were heart undressed unsure
and truly afraid of a rejection that makes a heart stoppage
disallowing visions, to be exponentially happy future imagined

you're feeling your heartbeat
in your knees going weak,
when the doctor says:

congratulations healthy swell
and/or
some years later,
I'm so so truly sorry, hell

when they hand you a long handle shovel no instructions needed and that scoop of earth weighs two tons and the sound of slow reverb in your head hurts like hell and you lack the strength to move and they move you aside quiet gentle like
but inside the temple of the two headed hydra-heart,
it's the rock and roll of slo mo, the violin crying, the drumming of
heavy metal chords plucked so slowly, it's you froze screaming

a billionaire of heartbeats you are,
but only ten or twenty maybe forty total in a lifetime
you total truly remember with the perfect clarity and
forever renders into your own unique orchestral symphony,
your true net worth, the stripes you wear
upon your shoulders skin,  
the tune when you hear it and melts you into rigidity

you fall to your knees wherever you are,
that is where you will find me,
just listen for the cars horns blaring
cursing the man lying in the street, re-listening to
ten or twenty maybe forty heartbeats total in a lifetime

you alone total truly that concert set recall and
the win-loss record inherent, inhiment,
in both of them, tears and the rents, all there in the tunes,
of forty beatings you took,
somehow it feels like here is, there was,
the answers to
where is shelter for the heart,
the answers that have gone and come and gone and someone says,

I don't feel a pulse

grief is fingernails in your palm
when you're standing in a public restroom
wondering why everything feels wrong.

grief is not having worn mascara for four months
because streaked ink-black cheeks isn't a look
you want to be known for.

grief is dancing on the verge of tears
in a math class, because your mind wanders
too often and death looms too large to avoid.

i made you
turn the doorknob for me
me
me with hands full of squishy pumpkin guts
wash them clean to get them messy
again
sculpting a friendship out of a fractured romance
you, with your broken shovel still planted in my backyard
sliding your hands over me, no friction
like a pool stick in between our chalky fingers
the thunder of knocking down bowling pins
sounds like atom bombs in an empty arcade room

how dare you