I obliterated this heart

because the tyrant lived there.

Like a bad head louse

it couldn’t let go

of the power

pulsing through me.

The power of anger,

reckless abandon,

and love.

My stomach might be the star

at the center of my solar system body,

but even large planets and hearts pull stars to their gravity

a little.

Like, child, I cry rivers from my anger

and bathe whole towns with the tears–

I bend this frame after the purpose

that my heart wants,

and if that’s gravity,

give this drumbeat muscle all of it,

give this heart

the power to make

the people depend on me for water,

make the people depend on the fuel of my fire,

keep them weeping at my romantic professions,

my heartache,

my triumphs in love.

When my heart knows what she craves,

I am the mightiest thing to soar this galaxy;

she wraps all the little moons around her finger

and laughs

while the lonely worlds come begging for them back.

When she is happy,

nothing can touch me;

no hunger

no breathless hitch

no throat deserted

by the flood squeezing down my face

can scathe us.

So my jealous sun-stomach rebelled

against her,

my loathing lungs joined forces

and blew a meteor Jupiter’s way,

blew a couple double-agent moons

to wreak havoc on the giddy deity of the sky.

They couldn’t stand this heart’s control of the solar system–

her bloody grip

and lightning need

were burning me

at the stake.

The Great Heartbreak,

historians would call it

if they saw my insides–

a great moon

falls through the pool

of the red atmosphere,

crashes,

splits it asunder.

A crater

liquifies solid land,

this collision spits out

continental crusts

and chunks of the core

through the equator’s storms,

unwilling offerings to the void’s décor.

Then

a great meteor

follows the traitor moon,

trailed by

a colony of comets.

They take another chunk, another ripple,

another mountain, more stone,

until even clouds wisp away

and only asteroids remain.

Ding, dong,

The tyrant is dead,

oh so dead,

smashed up and fled, a crumb trail scattered in its orbit like bread–

but no survivors remain to follow it back whole.

The tyrant is dead,

the sun tried to take its place,

but had to feed the hungry children again,

the lungs of Neptune tried to fill the vacancy

but had to keep up with breathing instead.

The power lay scattered,

still broken and cold,

and in the emptiness I knew peace,

stillness, a cease;

here, I keep nothing but boulders beating

where my greedy heart used to be.

***

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