If I Were a Carpenter I Would Build You a Home Out of My Heart

Nancy, sweet Nancy—my heart beats for you and you alone. To see that smile of yours, though the teeth are somewhat crooked, is the only thing worth living for. I would do anything in the world to show you the vastness of my love, like Brando's ass.

If my heart were made of wood, I would break apart the lumber and build you a house, a house made from my heart. You could live in my heart literally the way you do metaphorically now. Sure, my heart is kind of small, I would have to make the walls extremely thin, and we're not talking any kind of mansion here, but a shack—a shack made of love, from and out of my heart.

Even if this were not the case, if my heart were just my heart as it is now, sinew and muscle, probably more muscle, I'm not really sure of the make-up of the human heart, I would still build you a house. It would likely be grotesque and hideous, and haunt you in your nightmares, and once again, would be extremely small and thin-walled; but it would not stop my building it. I would not stop building it even if you demanded I stop, for that is how much I love you: Enough to not listen to you. The only thing that would stop me would be my death, which likely would have occurred as soon as I ripped my own heart out.

Perhaps I could live on an artificial heart. Artificial, like William Shatner's hair. I understand people can only live so long on artificial hearts, so I definitely would have to work fast. It would be a rush job, this heart house, but I'd get it done. Barring the days needed to recover from surgery, assuming I could even find a surgeon who would remove my heart just so I could use it to build your house. I mentioned it to my psychiatrist last week and he said most of them would turn me away at the door. But that wouldn't stop my search.

Come to think of it, this is a lot to ask, you know. Are you sure you want a heart house? I go through the trouble of ripping my heart out and getting an expensive operation and heart that will only last a few weeks just to build you a shitty heart-shack, you know, it all sounds like I'm doing all the work in this relationship. Why don't you give up your heart as well? Or build me a house? If we put them together we can make a bigger heart house, you know, and we can probably share it. I could even make a porch out of my liver and use your lower leg for stairs—it's not much to ask, one lower leg. I'm giving up my liver for the porch, goddammit. You won't even walk on crutches for me.

You know what? Fuck this whole thing. You're starting to make me feel like a big asshole. It's too bad I can't build a house out of asshole, I'd have more than enough at this point. The smell might bother you at first, but if our regular house isn't good enough, you have no right to complain. And I don't want to hear one word about how shitty my heart house is. If you had given up a few more body parts I could have really decked it out, but noooo, not Nancy, it's fine to cut people up and use their body parts to build adobes as long as it's not her body parts. You can be a real selfish bitch, you know? Like when my friends and I are playing X-Box and you yell from the bedroom to turn the volume down, you have to get up for work in 2 hours. Nice, Nancy, real nice.

I'm sick of this bullshit. You know, I think I'll build you the heart house anyway. Why not? You already saved me the trouble by ripping my heart out for me. Might as well do something with it. But don't expect no mansion, you life-draining succubus.

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