What’s that? I ask
pointing at the x-ray.
Oh, that’s your heart.
Or a tumor. I should check
with the radiologist.
Don’t bother. It’s both.
My heart is black.
Blacker than any organ
medical history records.
Or so I was told
as a teenager by a friend
of a friend who was sick
of watching me hurt her friend.
I had every excuse in the book:
I loved her too much,
I loved someone else,
I wasn’t in love enough.
In the end, I hurt everyone
involved and failed
to learn a thing.

And now
I see the results
in black and white
except reversed: what is
darkest and hardest to see
appears white, like an angel
growing inside the body
of a drowned man.
Or the latest victim
of a murderer’s
own worst traits.

Andrew Gent lives in New Hampshire where he works as an information architect. His first book, [explicit lyrics], won the Miller Williams poetry prize and is available from the University of Arkansas Press.