When they cut it out, they were surprised
to see what a tangled mess it was,
a jerry-rigged thing, like someone had pulled
all the wires out of the distributor cap and someone else
who barely knew what to do had tried to put it
all back, twisting on new bits
of wire to keep the connections alive,
to keep the heart beating
in that gnarl of barbed wire.
And she was surprised
to find out it was true, the story
she’d been telling for years, the one
where she’d disappeared into the wood,
where someone wanted to get something for nothing
and she was the nothing
because always there is a price to be paid
and only her heart would do.