Your heart

Your heart is safe with me

I know all about hearts.

At med school I studied their electrophysiology, and microscoped the cardiac cells of husbands and higher creatures. I coaxed reluctant hearts back to life and midwifed the final pulses of the dying.

I’ve watched hearts fibrillate on bypass, then stop before starting anew, strong and vital. I’ve been at postmortem and held the cold still heart of a child in my warm, pulsing hands.

Your heart is safe with me.

I know a lot about hearts.

I have never knowingly broken one, but am gentle, as I know how they shatter and fail.

My own has been ripped out by lovers, tossed around for sport and thin quivering slices fed to a husband’s girlfriends while I wept.

I know how hearts can bleed.

Your heart is safe with me.

I know a wee bit about hearts.

I would never treat yours recklessly, though I might tinker with the rate control from time to time

I love hearing your heart race when I lie with my head on your chest, and then slow to synchronise with mine. Your rhythms are no longer strange to me.

I am learning that your heart - like mine- is given too easily, too quickly, too fully.

That it is a little scarred, a little scared, but generous and true.

I would like to know your heart as well I know my own.

Trust me with it

Your heart is safe with me.

I am learning about hearts.

For Vaughan

Grief dismembered me

Removed arms for hugging

Eyes for weeping, for scanning the exits

A tongue to cry out

Grief stopped my heart from quickening

Stole legs for running away, for moving towards, for stuttering steps

Immobile, I

Grief passed me his scalpel

I clenched it in my teeth

Pared away flesh, exposed nerve

Excised friend, home, memory

Loss cauterized the wounds

Tribeless, I

Grief suckled me, stroked my hair

“There, there. What need have you for hands to signal ‘Help, I’m drowning’?.

I will shelter you”.

Helpless, I

In the riptide

Time shuffled past, eroded grief’s grip

Created openings through which sprigs of life might slip and bloom

Light slanted shyly through

Illuminated, I

Time showed me other griefs, larger than mine

More valid

Self pity, exposed, self-immolates

Awakening, I

Then you,

Laid back, healthy, happened along

‘What are you doing with these?’

Plucked the shutters from my eyes

Unpinned my arms, wrapped so tightly around myself

You sneaked in the gap

We blossomed there

A warming embrace, given and received, breaks grief’s spell

Remembered, I

Unfriended grief; neutered and neutralized it

To set aside for now

Arms hug and are held

Legs move towards, wrap around

Eyes open, smile

Tongue speaks joy

Reconnected, I

Feel alive

Xo