What Love Does

"He [Love] seemed like one who is full of joy, and had

My heart within his hand, and on his arm

My lady, with a mantle round her, slept;

Whom (having wakened her) anon he made

To eat that heart; she ate, as fearing harm.

Then he went out; and as he went, he wept." 

~~ Dante Alighieri, "La Vita Nuova", First Sonnet (The Siddal Edition, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, c. 1899, text courtesy: Project Gutenberg eBook)

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Love ate my heart.

Chewed it up, reduced it to a red, pulpy mass and 

Spat it out. That's what Love does.

And then it was a matter of deep debate!

Trample? No.
Bury? Maybe...

Or, perhaps, scoop it up gently in the tender hollow of one's hand,

And pour a few drops of soothing tears?

You watched it (as you must have done all those countless other hearts and loves before me) and did

Nothing. Neither did Love. 

You said you'd never felt for anyone what you did for me, and yet

You turned away. Perhaps you even suffered a little; but trust me, 

Nobody wept.

There it lay at my feet, and yours, too;

Throbbing. (Still? Could my heart be more durable?)

"Why me?" my wail bounced in fruitless echoes 

off the walls of an empty tunnel.

Brain; lungs; liver. Ripped (is this a shredder swallowing me?) excruciatingly apart.

My hand wrapped in yours, your eyes plunged deep into mine,

You said, "Let's talk of something else." (Always, always saying the right thing at the right moment; 

that was your miraculous forte!)

Something else? Let's see:

How about shoes? Ships? 

Or would you have preferred a scholarly discourse on sealing wax?

In a single unit of Planck time, I saw a sun poured out of a cauldron of liquid fire, and 

A moon crumbled into it like croutons in a bowl of soup. 

Carousing at the banquet of Life, I served my heart up on a golden platter for Love

To eat, chew to a pulp, and 

shoot it out into the abyss at the far

End of the universe.

And that, my friends, is how it's done.

(Hope you hear the wild applause? I do!)