On the day my father had his open
heart surgery, they cracked him
apart like a wishbone, pried him
open like a lobster tail. A gloved surgeon
on either side digging in and pulling
away with heft, my father a lush
pomegranate halved. His very sweetness
oozing onto the table–his heart then,
like the shivering mouse he found
in the laundry pile, scooped into an empty
detergent cup, and offered to me as a gift,
there, in the center of his chest, curled
up and failing in a nest of arteries, rising
and falling in a shroud of fur, my warm
exhale, lips grazing the thin petal
of ear, eyes closed, breathing life into a dying thing,
before I held it once in my hand, then sealed it
back inside the cool wet umber of the earth.
Sheleen McElhinney has appeared in Abandon Journal, West Trade Review, Lily Poetry Review, Sepia Quarterly, and others. Her debut book, Every Little Vanishing, won the 2021 Write Bloody Publishing book award.