The Pathologist prepares to send a Valentine

She can deduce much about a man from his heart,
once she has cut it free of his cold body; cleaving
closer than any lover could desire, this solid
geography of flesh opens to her like a map,
colours and shapes hinting whether a life was lived
wantonly and fast or prudently, laboriously, slow.
But here in her cool lab, gatekeeper and high priestess
of clinical ritual, steel instruments can't register
whether a heart ever broke or how much its owner loved,
if at all, or whether he raged passionate to the end
or quietly turned to death.
Back in her warm, cramped flat, she writes her valentine.
The gold-encrusted heart seems naked on white card,
red of artists, crimson, vermilion. Her black
ink words are an opening she isn't sure she wants,
a cut. She can't suppress a fear that, years from now,
her secret will be traced by saliva, a fingerprint,
one solitary, shiny, human hair. Solid as an engine,
her heart will pump blood till its destined end;
whether it soars or sings is for the poets.

© Jacqueline Mézec

(This poem was the winner of the 2004 Jersey Arts Trust Channel Islands Poetry Competition (in association with Writers Inc) and was published in States of Matter - Writers Inc Writers of the Year Competition Anthology 2004 and read at the Barbican, as well as being published in the Jersey Arts Trust Poetry Anthology (in partnership with Connex.))

Home