Pinned​

Issue 5

Don’t you know that you’ve transfixed my heart
onto a cold corkboard display,
don’t you understand that from the start
you’d pierced the places I could stray?
 
I’m a specimen in your exhibit,
labeled “H. fidelis,” for all to see,
while you endeavor to inhibit
my captive heart from breaking free.
 
I’m choked in ether, paralyzed:
obedient to your obsession.
My dried-out dreams are sanitized,
debrided now of skin on skin;
the sterile weight of your possession
punctures through me like a pin.
 
So keep my faith and carbon-date it:
my love’s preserved – and desiccated.

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SEAN PATRICK is a scientist and sonnet aficionado. Their work has appeared in Grand Little Things, Blue Unicorn, Lavender Lime Literary, Corporeal, Verum, and Boats Against the Current.

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