Day 154: Primer for the Nuclear Age

Is having a heart (a full-on acting, feeling heart) a bad thing? Sometimes - especially in a heartless unfeeling place - it seems so.

Primer for the Nuclear Age - Rita Dove

At the edge of the mariner’s
     map is written: “Beyond
     this point lie Monsters.”

Someone left the light on
     in the pantry—there’s
     a skull in there on the shelf

that talks. Blue eyes
     in the air, blue as
     an idiot’s. Any fear, any

memory will do; and if you’ve
     got a heart at all, someday
     it will kill you.