Instead of a Lobotomy

I told the nurse I wanted my heart removed
immediately. She began to explain, as she checked
my insurance card, certain ramifications: a lack
of circulation, death, to name a few.

I want it in a jar, I said, like a pair of inflamed tonsils.
She leaned over the reception desk to get a closer look
– had I taken in too much of something? – or perhaps
she meant to fabricate a sense of intimacy
(a familiar trick) before she asked, why exactly?

I intend to put it on a high shelf in a big museum,
I told her, amongst paintings by men without ears and marbles
chopped by blind sculptors who have also, once or twice,
been terribly in love.

She thought to dissuade me then: not even the Moma
will allow such a thing. I’ll settle, I told her
for setting it on a piano that plays blues
if it keeps the strings resonating.

She apologized that she could not help,
so with a thank-you-but-I-don’t-need-another-one-of-those
I pushed past her. Miss miss! She called, and I reveled at last
in being the one to flea. The Doctor would understand.

The thing would be broken, any day
the pieces would spread out in my blood, and what had flowed
smoothly, unknown to my limbs, would become caught at every bend.
I would never walk or sleep with ease again.

The patients were in various states of getting dressed
or naked. If I could only find him amongst the unwell,
I knew he’d agree to the need for pre-emptive care
in the case of non-fatal conditions, of which, you would certainly be one.

In fact, he would probably agree that it should have been removed
when the arrow first went in.