but is this heart for me?

a poem

i pluck the beating heart from my eucalyptus tree

this heart is not a cartoon heart
it’s an actual,
maybe human, heart all red and pink
and wiggly and smooshy and bloody and pumping,
making a sound like a sump pump,
shloshupm shloshump shloshump

when i first pluck the heart from the tree it beats faster, louder, harder but then i lift the organ up to my lips and whisper, “it’s okay, i got you.” then the heartbeat calms to a sweet beat and i place the heart under my t-shirt to keep it warm. it plays in the rhythm section with my own heart and together they make the kind of music i want to skip to, so i do.
shloshupm shloshump shloshump

i skip up and down the street outside of my childhood home, and i resist the urge to tell everyone about my secret extra heart, and i don’t mention that i used to live here all those decades ago and i don’t tell them that this very tree is really mine and i am hers and how we’ve been communicating since i was a little girl.
i told peter i want to be a tree after i’m dead i can’t think of anything better than a tree. i should get a book on trees! hello, Amazon, you haven’t seen me in minutes on end, BUY NOW a book on trees. if paper comes from trees, then would a book on trees also be a book of trees? something to think on. there are endless things to think on. how can anyone ever be anything but riveted in this life? i knew my tree had a heart but not a literal one but maybe this heart belongs to someone else maybe someone was born inside of this tree and for reasons i can’t imagine, remained invisible, everything but the heart. is that the most important part of a human? is that what this means? i’m also a big fan of the brain maybe i should check the other branches for a brain and extremities and maybe a face or maybe, maybe, maybe…this is enough. 

if i do end up becoming a tree after i die, will the tree showcase my pumping heart? i wonder. is all writing wonder? is all living wonder?
i wonder.
shloshupm shloshump shloshump