Grace (Poem)

This muscle at the center.

The one they keep calling a heart.

It wants things, it says.

It beats with its own fierce reasons,

and carries the wild scars of someone else's whip,

the sad sads,

the savage,

yet somehow still begs for forgiveness.

Like a deer,

starved,

who pardons the malnourished bear,

when the drought forces him to kiss her with all of his teeth,

all shivers,

and stumbles,

and blood.

And she willingly crosses the threshold of his tongue,

a sort of becoming she cannot rebuff,

because the bear is fed,

finally,

and the one can no longer recall the form of the other as any different from his own.

Such small trades in the darkness,

this commerce of love,

in which our illuminated joy is assessed against all of the grist of our own mills.

Yet still it is asked of us,

every measure of ourselves,

and then it asks for more.

And so we proffer more,

until we have laid all upon the scales.

For this is the purpose of our atoms,

these grains of flesh.

To give.

bvk, 2018.