While Your Body

By Katherine Allred




Your heart is too hot inside your ribcage,

so you set it on the kitchen windowsill to cool

just for a minute.

A passing tramp smells it steaming there;

it smells like nutmeg and tobacco.

It smells so good he snatches it and flees.

Now your heart rides the rails in a dirty bindle

across the continental divide,

while your body carries heartless on back home.