“Interior” by Laura Didyk, Sharpie on paper, 2015.

this morning, I woke to

your heart
thrashing in the chambers

that have grown large and
echoing behind

my breasts. my lungs

bruised from
the hammering of thick

blood like congealed oil,
against them.

I pulled myself
from underneath
layers

of cold metal and stone
and
drove your heart

to my therapist, where
I hauled it from my

chest and

placed it in her hands.
“codependency is an
illness”, she said.

so, I took your
bloody heart back

from her dry, calloused hands
and brought it, again

to bed, where I cradled

it to sleep; the

hollow of my
chest, decaying without

a heart
of its own.

Nicole Stanek is a poet based out of Long Island. She is a graduate of Dowling College, where she studied Psychology and Media. She currently leads the Westhampton Poets Society, a writers group on the East End of Long Island.

Read an interview with Nicole here.