He Who’ll Only Hold Space for an Elephant Heart – Isabelle Newson

December 8, 2025

He could never step foot into a monastery.
He will never pray in public,
He will never share bread under the sun,
He will never, most certainly not ever,
Be tonsured.

For the shame in his bag
Amounts to an elephant heart.
Ventricles in heirloom pouches
Fraternize with cremated staleness.
Possessing secrets like caves do,
Spaces silently waiting
To accumulate limestone
So we forget how, in an empty room,
To create celebration.

Soon his eyelids will mirror
Hooved vacancy
And he’ll say
“It’s just mixing,
metallic meets medicinal cherry, you see”
But leftover veins covet
The culpable end:
A space he knows he shouldn’t
Cling to.

Blood on flyers of lost cats,
Beef mimicry caressing gloves,
Bent aortas creating a nest
To poke his masochistic hipbone.

What he ought to look for moving forward
Is all he is still trying to leave behind.