You are the smell of a full moon over Babylon,

the taste of a credit card declined by an angel,

the sound of an idea not ripe enough to pick.

the look of a whisper overheard by the dying,

You are the feel of saxophones with reeds made of peaches.

“You have a heart the size of a hummingbird’s.”

The transparent x-ray was held out before me, antiseptic sympathy dripping off the white coat.

“And that means?”

I leaned forward, staring at the Miro of balanced organs, trying to see something familiar in the abstract.

“I’m sorry.  A heart this small beats twice as fast.  Think of it as constant overtime.  I’m afraid to say maybe three weeks.”

I left.  No tears, no pain, no regrets.

A heart the size of a hummingbird’s experiences life twice as fast.

He filled the room with lightning bugs, kept in mason jars lined with love letters.

He nourished them with wine and spoken words of poetry until their hearts synched with his own.

And then, one moonless night in August, he released them to the dark where they silently spelled her name against the blackboard of the sky.

“This will only hurt a bit.”

The lie roped his lips into a false smile as he tapped the syringe with a finger.

Air bubbles of mistrust burst like shattered truth.

Why is it that the inoculation for heartbreak is just as painful as the virus of love?