You Own My Heart

The cat sat on the pillow in the corner of the shop.
Its tail switched with a rhythm like the ticking of a clock.
He watched a dead heart beating in a glass jar on the shelf
impossibly continuing as if it had life itself.

The owner of the storefront never noticed this odd site
for it would simply not beat until she closed up at night.
When the door was closed, and the shade was pulled down low,
the heart would come alive. How did this dead heart know?

Not only did it have life, but memory as well.
It remembered how it came to be though its body was in hell.
It once beat inside a captain of a frigate on the sea
that flew the skull and crossbones, the flag of piracy.

He raped and stole and pillaged. He was a cruel man.
He used a cat o’ nine tails to abuse many at his hand.
On a trip around the islands down Aruba way
he met a Voodoo lady that he carried away.

He was a brutal master. He treated her with spite.
He mercilessly thrashed her, ‘til he fell asleep one night.
For this mistake he paid dearly. She’d vowed she’d have his heart.
She cut it out with scissors, and wrapped it in his charts.

A spell she cast upon it so it would never die,
and would always recollect the how, the where, the why.
Returning home she sealed it in a clear jar of glass
with no way to open it nor note of sordid past.

Eventually it made its way to this curious little shop
though no one knew its legend, it was doomed to never stop.
Now its feline companion watches as it never skips a beat.
The heart within the package belonged to Jean Lafitte.