by Alix Wood
Four weeks after I lost him, my doctor asks,
Has anyone ever told you that you have a heart murmur?
I shake my head, swallow dust, and stare at a poster of bones.
Well, you do. But don’t worry about it.
How do I tell someone I have never not worried about anything in my entire life?
Heart, you are my hardest-working organ.
Inside me, a valve pulses open-close-open-close, mumbles beneath its breath,
clamors to be heard like the pounding of hooves against packed earth.
Five liters of blood pump through from toe to brain,
each cell a messenger horse carrying a blank letter.
Four weeks ago at the cape, he held me at water’s edge.
He told me if this is to end, let it end in a sunset.
The moment was so littoral I wanted to laugh, or scream, or both,
and a side stitch panged at me like a boxer delivering a sucker punch to my waist,
drawing the air from my lungs into polluted atmosphere.
Heart, you are a closed fist, but my palms are always open.
A pig’s aorta keeps my grandmother’s eighty-five-year-old body alive,
its length stretching from left ventricle to abdomen like a bendable straw.
Just once, I think I see my future.
Just once, I want to be clean.
Inside me, a quiet sound pounds soft as a horse’s nose.
Doctor, does the heart murmur when it’s made a mistake?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________