I am a thing of many heartbeats

many walls, many minds.

and some men mark out the ways

ten by ten

by twenty-five

that I can be laid out on a plate

losing count at organelles and

organelles in the tight dry skins of

the mothership organelles.

I’m not in these pages, dearest,

flattened, candied red and blue.

but still you reach, tweeze apart bones

for tiny minds, for glowing truth in lives

crushed flat on a slide of glass

trickle acid on my cuts just to burn me more

and dearest

I thought you said you loved me before.