Brothers
I have two hearts. One is in the usual spot behind my ribcage, but the other lies there between the fifth and sixth vertebrae, hating the first and its prime position, where everybody looks, and the two press upon one another like brothers in bed wrapped in the same single sheet.
The beating is what bothers me most, because one goes and then the other and it rocks me from left to center as if my body were a crib, as if my arms were the curved parts and my head the mobile spinning its curling planets high above my red, veiny children
The first is loud. It bleeds and cries and pumps its fat little fists in the night. It tears up the pink and white bed I so carefully made for it. It gathers up all the blood for itself and drools plasma everywhere and doesn’t share.
But the other coos in its bed of bone, burying its little hands in my spine.
And it cries in its bed unknown, and it feels it.
