Salt

My heart feels too big in my chest—
as big as the moon, and as spread out as the salt
on the roads — and it beats and it beats
like an old set of tires on the pavement
of O'Connor, in the summer,
where all those cyclists died.
 
And for all that, my heart doesn't feel
big enough to love you — it's only a modest thing,
after all, and anxious, and choked,
the same way the streetlamps clutch at their bulbs
just so on the corner of O'Connor, at Laurier,
 
and every time I see them I think,
who designed these lamps
like bunches of grapes? I feel sorry
for these sour fruits, and I feel kinship 
between their hard, round seeds
and the worried old stone in my chest,

poor fruits which haven't quite ripened yet
but glow anyway, as big as the moon
and luminescent as the salt — all that glitter
on the roads, in winter,
when nobody cycles at all,
 
and no one dies.

© Dessa Bayrock