Emergency Room

A heart condition.
So much implication in that.
A needy heart.
A greedy heart.
A broken heart.
Pierced through with its own sword?
Disappearing like grass?
What depths are in my own
too-human heart?
To wish someone's death
who I don't even know?
To calculate how this may be
my answer to prayer?
I despise the thought
and still entertain it.

She is a child;
a mother of children;
a weak, frail thing.
That I never was,
nomatter my submission.
I was never weak or frail or a child.
Does that give him power?
Does he feel big and strong?
As his pipes in his divey apartment crumble and
his ceiling caves in.
As his business falls apart
and disappears like sand through fingers.
As his children become strangers
hating all he stands for
because it is not them.
Does he derive power
from a child-lover
with a bad heart?

(C) Tasha Chinnock 2011