I would like to take your heart smoothly out of your breast
Some nights I can feel it trembling
Like a silent train known by its movements across the midnight rails
A shiver through a child
A dog having a dream
I can feel it trembling while you sleep
I would like to take your heart from out of your breast and holding it with both hands
Gently get up from bed and tiptoe into the kitchen
Placing it carefully onto the wooden cutting board
Then pull a rolling pin from its proper drawer and begin to smooth the heart out
Rolling the pin slowly
Back and forth
Tenderly flattening the soft tissue
Maybe turn on the radio at a low level and hum quietly along
Rolling the pin back and forth
My arms constant
Moving
Like pulling oars, rowing a boat towards you
Or like the waves moving beneath me
Back and forth
Smoothing the wrinkles out
Pressing down
Spreading the heart across the cutting board into a wide circle
Until it were flat as a pancake
Then carefully peel it up
Bake it
Pour syrup on it
And eat it like one
The whole thing
It makes a large pancake
It is large and perfectly cooked
Brown but not too brown with gold, amber ends
Light and soft in the middle with a slight crisp at its edges
I use my fork and knife many times
It makes many bites
It is sweet and fluffy
When it is firmly inside of me, filling up the spaces of me that were not
I will wash the utensils
The plate, the board, and the pin and the pan I cooked it in
I will wash my hands, turn off the lights, and head back to bed
I climb in
You stir a little
I pull the cover over us and hold on
Me, filled with a light so heavy it is the color of gold
And you, finally calm-
Softer-
Without your quivering heart
Filled now instead with a space inside you so wide and dark
You can stretch your legs out
Put your hands under your head and fall asleep
Beneath the atmosphere that has climbed into you
Spread itself like ink noiselessly above your fields
Adjusting its wet stars ever so slightly to correspond with your eyesight
And as you drift off
Their light slowly moves with you