Talking To My Heart
Cool, isn’t it?
says the technician smiling
as if she had painted your image
on the monitor.
Who can account for her taste, dear heart?
You are a tangled package bound
with rivers of string,
your tricuspid valve a slit
in torn wrapping,
your thump-thump a secret
trying to escape from its chamber.
How shallow the breaths
that fluttered against your rib cage.
I thought you would collapse
like a red balloon,
shreds clinging to a telephone wire.
All it would take is a gust of wind
to blow you away, old friend.
Now the stress test is over,
you are pronounced whole again.
How about a walk in the woods, maybe a jog,
a lo-fat yogurt or blueberries?
© Constance Vogel Adamkiewicz, 2012
A graduate of Marquette University and Northeastern Illinois University, Constance Vogel Adamkiewicz taught high school English and Creative Writing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Chicago. She has published over one hundred fifty poems in literary journals. She is the author of a poetry collection, Caged Birds, and chapbooks, The Mulberry and When the Sun Burns Out. Most recently her work has appeared in After Hours and is forthcoming in Snowy Egret.
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