r i g h t  h a n d  p o i n t i n g

short fiction  short poetry  short commentary  short...uh..art
 

 

     
  Karen D. Mitchell

Open Heart Surgery

 

 
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.
    - "Three Women," Sylvia Plath
 

A flower risks
every time
the petals open.

The threat looms
    always,
waiting for the precise

moment, when bees
inject their venom
and snatch sweetness

away, or shears
amputate stems
at the kneecap, and we

crumple and fly apart,
ushered by the wind's
insistence that we

change.  The falling seeds—
and where they land—
our only consolation.


 

 

 

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