After I wrote this, a friend scrawled on this page, “Yes.” <br /> <br />And I said, merely to myself, “I wish it could be for a <br />different seizure—as with Molly Bloom and her ‘and <br />yes I said yes I will Yes.' <br /> <br />It is not a turtle <br />hiding in its little green shell. <br />It is not a stone <br />to pick up and put under your black wing. <br />It is not a subway car that is obsolete. <br />It is not a lump of coal that you could light. <br />It is a dead heart. <br />It is inside of me. <br />It is a stranger <br />yet once it was agreeable, <br />opening and closing like a clam. <br /> <br />What it has cost me you can’t imagine, <br />shrinks, priests, lovers, children, husbands, <br />friends and all the lot. <br />An expensive thing it was to keep going. <br />It gave back too. <br />Don’t deny it! <br />I half wonder if April would bring it back to life? <br />A tulip? The first bud? <br />But those are just musings on my part, <br />the pity one has when one looks at a cadaver. <br /> <br />How did it die? <br />I called it EVIL. <br />I said to it, your poems stink like vomit. <br />I didn’t stay to hear the last sentence. <br />It died on the word EVIL. <br />It did it with my tongue. <br />The tongue, the Chinese say, <br />is like a sharp knife: <br />it kills <br />without drawing blood.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dead-heart-2/
