heart monitor

I have spent the past weeks reading about the human heart, cramming my brain with facts about this fist-shaped organ tilting slightly forward & left. I can tell you about the way coronary arteries fill in the space between beats, the danger of watery blood. Did you know that laid out end to end, the vasculature of the human body could spin a thin red line so fine & long you could wrap it twice around the Earth before tying it in a bow? Think of that gallon of milk you carried through the snow 2 miles home from the store this morning. Now say a prayer of gratitude for your uncomplaining heart, which will have pumped 2000 gallons of blood through your strong body by the time you lay your head down to rest. So, drink a glass of red wine. Laugh. And for heaven's sake, lay off the salt! Don't worry if the lights go out, for the heart makes its own electricity. And even lonely hearts have four chambers.

Tonight, I will lay in my bed and feel for new pulses in the dark. Behind the knee, the side of the nose, and if my head is positioned just so, I can actually hear the small scratch of my carotid artery against the cool crispness of the pillowcase. So much happens in a single beat, and yet I'll gather 82 per minute as I rest -- yet another way to measure out life in coffee spoons. When I close my eyes I'll see the mountains and valleys of EKG strips. The peaked T waves of hyperkalemia, the jagged teeth of atrial fibrillation -- or my favorite, the disobedient schoolboy Premature Ventricular Contraction, who jumps to the head of the line in his unruly excitement.

All this science & learning and my mind still can not fathom such a rational, dedicated little machine living in my chest. If the handsome cardiothoracic surgeon spread my ribs he would surely find a crude, red, little bucket coursing with longing, overflowing with love.