The wooden heart
I wear over my own
like a tiny armor plate
was carved by the hands of a geography teacher
from Melitopol.
Maybe this is why it looks like a map
of all the hearts of all the women
who left their homes in the dark of occupation,
marching into the darkness of their future.
“Enemies live at my place now,”
says the geography teacher
who sells painted hearts
on a bridge in Bratislava.
“If I could
I’d light up my own
like a torch
to show the way
home, the target of fire.
And then maybe
it would stop aching during each air raid siren
as if signaling a change of weather.”
“My heart,” says the geography teacher,
“is petrified with hate.
I am a wooden woman
selling wooden hearts on a windswept bridge.
There’s a dash instead of a place of residence in my biography.
Please
take this heart as a gift.
Maybe it’s
the real one.”
