‘Heart-Rot’

Aaron Beck is a poet and artist. This work examines the coming into being of a trans person.

Heart-rot

My bedroom window stared down  an alder tree when I was eleven.

In the first month of 2012, we had winds that made me frightened  of God.

The noise    of the     glass straining drove me, ribs hammering, to my mum’s room

Like a     child in    an old-school   novel, pale and fleeing to Mother’s chambers.

Chest    burning     black        with fear. but she slept alone in there.

Which   meant     there        was room for me 

And there,       we     heard      that alder buckle the fence.

In a few months                          I stopped hearing from my dad.

And we                                               lost a dozen roof tiles at least. 

By the                                                     following March he’d died. 

And                                                          they towed the tree away, 

We                                                             got told it was a heart attack. 

And I                                                          saw it’s trunk was a splintering mess.

Surrounded                                                 by a snow-like blanket of its chipped wood.

See, the                                                      alder had a fungal infection.

That left it                                                  decaying around the center 

And made                                                     it’s bark a thin crusted shell.

So it gave                                                       an appearance of 

Of an ever-                                                     weathering endurance.

But it’s body                                                  fed what was doomed to kill it.

As I grew in that                                           room. It ate, ate, ate.

Where my dad had a                                   broken body with drink, 

my alder had a bit of a                               soft-spot.

                   I looked it up,                        what was wrong with it. 

                             Apparently, they call it heart-rot.

Heather Rankin is a new poet/writer based in Scotland who is currently working towards a masters degree in creative writing. She loves concrete poetry in particular but she doesn't like to box herself in!