The Things You Do Not Say

If you took your heart out
of that brown paper bag
you keep under your coat
If you cracked it open
like the book beside your bed
that you read every night
Would it scream?
Would it shriek?
Would it sing?
What story would it tell?
What images would it project upon the walls
within you hide
and would you wish to hide them, too?
Would you quickly clap your hands down on its pages
on its song
lest someone hear?
Or would you hear?
Would you bow your head and offer
all the tears you've never cried?
For whom would they be shed?

What if you caught your mind
impaled it on a pin
Watched it lash and wiggle, creep and crawl
blindly bare its mandibles and lightly dripping fangs
What would it evoke?
What would it awake in you?
What response would it call forth?
What desperate and defiant acts would
play there in the dark?
Would you scoop it back inside your head?
Place it under glass?
Watch in fascination when you dared to let it roam?

But your heart is an unopened book
in a bag
in a coat
long hung in the closet and forgotten.
Perhaps you gave it to Good Will.
And your mind, it is a monster
you've been feeding every night.
You never meant for it to leave its cage
as you took the creature out
and watched it kill the girl next door.

What if you said the things you do not say?
The words that rest beneath your tongue
inside your throat
behind your eyes.
Would I know you?
Would I know you at all?