One Heartbeat
Sometimes I am felled by humanity. I, too, have lived in fear. I have been in heat. I have lost everything and gained the world at once. I'm not proud about loving so hard that sometimes I forget I am whole, but neither do I want to be so numbed out that the world can't touch me. Everywhere, what I imagine: tattoos of mermaids, hearts, names, and bullet holes; rage and love and disease. All people have had a broken heart, have loved and lost and wished for something more. I stare out the car window at the ranches, the cottages, the capes, and I wonder who lives there and does the kitchen shine and is the sofa leather or brocade and does the shower get hot enough? Who is sick and who is tired? I read that every cell in a heart beats individually, like a little heart itself. But it is only when they pulsate together that the whole heart moves.