When a Heart Truly Breaks

I was scared. Sweating scared. Lip stinging scared. An irregular pulsar in my overstuffed cavity offered a less than precise signal, two-two time minus one, again and then again, and all inside chose to rise in unison and grip my desiccated throat. My fingers hovered but I dared not move. The continuation of this vessel in the balance and yet I still wrestled with pride an a fear of wasting people’s time. To call or not to call is the very pressing question as my elbow cushions pins and a hollowing glacier carved my gut. In my head I’m running checks, each twist each twinge each creak each pain is it fresh or a legacy. As fear begets panic I cough and thump my chest. Should my breath be quite this short? Two digits pressed on sinistral wrist trying to gauge normality amidst the alarm all I feel is too fast, too fast and then nothing it keeps missing yet none around seem to sense, don’t read the gaping orbs and snapping talk as ought but  censure and huff away with my chest sending mixed signals to the world and me as the ice cascades down my spine then subsides. Oh yes I was very scared.   And the doctors and the nurses tell me everything is ok, but send me on my way with a script that tells a different story:   that crux, ripped and torn, showed a way past manifold beats of egress, gateways of choice, whether whimpered snuffed filament or spiteful fuse that refuses to blow I just needed to join the dots to reveal the route to my mortal harbour   And the very next day? Life continued with no regard, didn’t look over its shoulder to see if I was keeping up, left me instead to ponder:   in a hot, rude, black shod silver kiln where a heart believes it has been truly broken, inferior and ventricular, the first bars of that September song strike open a sudden realization of December too soon   I cannot lead the cheer for the assassin’s bleed but ask they lay their blades at rest until the closing breath has fled cracking blackening tendrils are ready grown along the wires on the map of underpinned organs and split my rolling eyes   yes I see rocks and scraped dirt under that angular peninsular of steel and glass not as valedictory obituary but shallow graves awaiting the pretty little girls their sub-strated gate to immortal perfection   their eternal smiles of garnered youth masking a ghastly grimaced truth yet they’ll remain, forever, so beautiful while I have left it too late and will just fade in a grey scale buried between the help wanted and used cars   Bottled and coddled, a frightened stasis took control and suddenly I felt old and guilty and I remembered my mother and I feared an unwelcome reunion.   deep in dominion of the dying, between the second and third heart congesting hours, I looked into the darkest glass naked , dishevelled  and daring to ask for answers I thought I deserved expecting no reply but knowing that bub black beast sees me now and for me alone will reserve and release through execrable  years of fearful, fitful non-sleep its furious horror And now here I sit and sweat on a doctor’s discretion, knowing not whether I can swing from the trees or should simply drop to my knees in surrendered execration.   this changeling walks, still scared to run, along furred boulevards of evasion, greater or luckier still, squeezed tighter than the urban rush in his breast yet still he craves those complex folds of pleasure and sees through the eyes of a fool seeking cleaner rapture