Sheer
by Kyrsten Jensen
If you could see through
to the heart of her,
skin stretched so thin
near to splitting,
see the cracks glued shut--
the perpetual bruising,
the irregular beat that
changes to match the
chaos, the calm, the
creeds of life;
It’s a good heart--
it’s a strong heart,
but it’s tired and
tugs at its own strings
lately.
It’s lonely but craves
solitude--
full but always
emptying itself
into another.
The cracks bleed a bit
but it’s nothing
a bit more glue
can’t close,
sticky and stinging,
but look--
you can barely see
the lines.
Encased in fragile
glass ribs,
pulse by pulse
it pumps thin
lifeblood laced with
the poison
of everyday everything.
Beat by beat, it
fills its hollow chambers
with a tide of crimson,
sluicing through thin
lilac-colored veins.
Mile by mile it pumps,
powers, steps and stops
and stumbles
and beats, beats on
through gales and
dark, wild, breakneck
nights of vigil
that split it
again and again--
This time we sew it up:
suture shut
a gap thick enough
to press fingers into
but its fluttering pulse
ticks on,
sheer will through
sheer, dogged trudge
and it beats--
that flicker just beneath
the paper skin.
to the heart of her,
skin stretched so thin
near to splitting,
see the cracks glued shut--
the perpetual bruising,
the irregular beat that
changes to match the
chaos, the calm, the
creeds of life;
It’s a good heart--
it’s a strong heart,
but it’s tired and
tugs at its own strings
lately.
It’s lonely but craves
solitude--
full but always
emptying itself
into another.
The cracks bleed a bit
but it’s nothing
a bit more glue
can’t close,
sticky and stinging,
but look--
you can barely see
the lines.
Encased in fragile
glass ribs,
pulse by pulse
it pumps thin
lifeblood laced with
the poison
of everyday everything.
Beat by beat, it
fills its hollow chambers
with a tide of crimson,
sluicing through thin
lilac-colored veins.
Mile by mile it pumps,
powers, steps and stops
and stumbles
and beats, beats on
through gales and
dark, wild, breakneck
nights of vigil
that split it
again and again--
This time we sew it up:
suture shut
a gap thick enough
to press fingers into
but its fluttering pulse
ticks on,
sheer will through
sheer, dogged trudge
and it beats--
that flicker just beneath
the paper skin.
Kyrsten Jensen has called the Salt Lake Valley home for many years, and the West truly has her heart. She graduated from Utah State University with a degree in English Creative Writing and now grudgingly writes marketing content by day while scribbling poems and stories in notebooks left all over her house every hour in between. When not writing, she spends as much time as she can hiking or biking the many trails of the Wasatch and Uintah mountains.