For Craig Arnold
If you ask me how I know when the heart is sick, I’ll tell you to imagine
My heart as a giant moth at night where the dark spots on its wings are
Spots where the tissue has died and doubled in size
Growing dark and as stiff as leather. That its vessels have hardened
And how when it beats it strains to move. That my moth-heart
Is as fragile as tin shivering in the auscultation of wind.
If I tell you I am sacred of the night drawn out
As pale as milk, of the dead-drum heart with its edges pulled taught.
If I say the heart is not what you think but a muscle only.
Or the mind is well-organized water — would you
Hate me for taking poetry and cutting it for stone.
Would you hate me if I told you that this poem
Isn’t a poem at all, but the only way I know how to say I miss you,
And that I wish you had not died falling from that volcano.
Kristian Becker is an MS2 who previously studied poetry at Boston University and Columbia School of the Arts.
