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.