I.
Introspection:
As if I turn my eyes inward
And find a miracle—
Nerves, glowing and snapping with electricity;
Brightly colored blurs the balls of light that
Carry thoughts
Too fast for my inside eyes to follow
(What goes faster, thought or light?);
Muscles, thick and strong and rippling,
Their fabric tightly woven, knit between
Bones, thin and brittle as an eggshell
Hollow like a bird’s
(At least, I feel like I could fly);
And draped over it all,
Fluttering like the veil of some bashful bride,
A fragile delicate lacework of veins and arteries
Carrying red hot shimmering blood
(The elixir of life) to the
Heart, the center of gravity,
Sparkling nerves and muscles tightly woven and
Eggshell bones and lacy veins
Wound together in a dense sphere of beauty and perfection.
(Isn’t this what they mean when they say perfection?)

II.
And yet, I can’t help thinking how
Hellishly easy it would be
To break
This,
Slice it with a cold black silver knife,
Reach in, tear out the heart,
Tear the fabric of my body to shreds—

III.
And you would let my white hot shining blood
Trickle through your fingers and cascade down your arms
As you thrust my heart closer, closer to heaven;
And it would be transformed—
No longer glowing on their own, the nerves
(Now dark and dead and dull)
Would be lit by light from without:
A beam of sunlight fractured into a hundred beams
As it passed through the prisms of my veins.
My heart would burn with a thousand million shattered rays of sunlight,
And the sun would set my heart on fire—
And the sun would set my heart aflame…