#pomez

Like a seashell that rolls up to your feet

As the tide crawls

              It presents itself, plainly, still hiding

              You imagine squinched eyes but open palms, reaching out (nervous)

This is your spine, stack it up neatly, one block over the

              Other like books you’ve read,

              And loved/

You’re holding a compass in your hand,

                              Needle tracing invisible earth magnets

                              Trying to ground its sharp sides

                              Due north, always

              We wear our elbows, we can be sharp on all sides

There’s clocks on our wrists, time hovering over tendons

trying once again, to place us

                              ( And yet we have no idea

                              Where to be and how )

It’s strange to be in a hospital when you’re not terminally ill

Like everyone is waiting, hushed

For you to be back someday, (frail)

The technician who hooked the machine up to me was a minister, once

He said:

He went back to school to take pictures of peoples’ hearts

Like maybe that’s more meaningful

Something that’s real we can’t see without machines

In every person

A single organ to carry each of our lives

Rather than something entirely invisible to everyone

Faith is required for both

It’s an arresting thing—seeing your own heart on a screen

A live stream of what it’s actually doing, what it actually lLooks like

My heart //(my heart)

I’ve seen diagrams, of course

One dimensional and color-coded

But it’s different to see your own

(proof that you even have one)

And watch it move and dance and wiggle

All for you

(for me)

It doesn’t behave quite like I thought it would,

Precise seizures and clean opening/closing/opening/ pulse/ close/

//Open/

It’s a series of repeated frenzies

Muscles pounding and squeezing, oblong

Bulges and the little valves

Waving wildly like a curtain on an open window would 

if It were filmed and then that film was played in

Fast forward

So erratic, thrashing

All that dizziness, at rest

(62 beats per minute

Sometimes more, sometimes less)

Looked like a horserace or a hurricane

Made me nervous like I wanted to reach in with

My fingers to help squeeze the muscles and make sure

The flaps open and close when they should

Maybe even just hold the whole jolting mess in my hands

Because somehow that feels safer

But I can’t help my own heart

-

All that flailing and hammering /

I wouldn’t want to see it under

The gun of a sprint

Makes me nervous just to think

(how much, how fast, the timing, the pulsing)

All of it never, ever stops

Never

The perfect series of beats, clenches and releases

Happens whether or not I trust it will

Whether or not I am even aware of it

Happens when I sleep and shower and cook and kiss

And farm and run and yell

It never stops and

It is the primary thing, keeping me alive

This creature inside my chest that I have never seen before,

This version of me that is more primordially (me)

Than my idea of (me) will ever be

The me that doesn’t know what a mirror is

Or even a name

The (me) that remembers playing on the beach, but

Doesn’t even care at all about

The political race or printout plane tickets

The (me) that’s wise and simple

The (me) that never gets tired

The (me) that doesn’t sleep

And I felt in awe of it, this (myself) that is completely

Underneath all the inklings

Or attempts at the definitions

I try to frame

(on a padded hospital table, eyes watering

From the staring, surely,

The staring)

Watching the force of the living

That is wired to live

The living without eyes, inside darkness

Without the notion of apple or orangutan or

Global warming or goats

Without bank robbers or paddleboats

Or steel structures or neomarxism

Open/close/open/close/open/pulse/close

We looked at it from every angle,

This (real) thing

Living inside my chest

One of the truths that’s always true

(your heart is beating, it’s keeping you alive)

He checked the flow of blood

Through the chambers in there

Flashing rainbows blue/orange/red

Static, visualized

He said it was the same way a doppler radar works

Tracking fronts of weather

Pushing moisture and storms

Bulky blunders of lightning and heat

He said this is the weather inside each chamber of my heart

It turns and quickens

Scatters in predictable patterns (not at all obvious to me)

He nodded and my eyes watered more

The weather of my heart

(the weather of my heart)

The weather,

Being alive

Open/close/opening/opening

I never understood the way my father cries—

So infrequently

At small things, little profundities

More than half of the five times I’ve ever seen it

Have been because of me

An alive disembodiment of his being alive

Proof that he exists

Because I exist

Something

Far more grand than either of us

The big incredible systems that neither of us

Have any control over

But that (are).

All that is - we have to trust that it will continue to be

The humbling we experience

In the company of these bodies

We cannot even begin to understand

Maybe that’s what love is

Awe at the things that are of us

That our minds cannot grasp

More simple, and also far more complex

Ellie in my one class says “If I had to do that” that being public speaking or writing a paper or some other    thing some other     do thing, “If I had to do that I would kill myself” and

Look, I wanted to say “prove it” but that’s 1) reactionary 2) dramatic 3) oops

So instead I tweeted about lexical responsibility and     sensitivity and word choice like I’m     civilized

There’s this comedy term hack which is like “what you said has already been said     and better” and that’s how this goes

You’re supposed to feel love feel different know they’re the     one but you’re supposed to also love yourself and you know the second you stop looking for it you find it

Dove there’s all this swirling and I don’t know how to say it, it’s so hack and on that one show Orange is the New     whatever that character     the hot one     says something about getting past the swirling darkness in her brain and I gagged when I heard it but what     else is there to say or

If you want to be taken seriously you have to     say     something and it’s like     you walk into a room  

Look I just want to write some magnum opus or even a     medium opus

Dove I told you     in my best impression of a     sad person   I told you “It’s like there’s all this stuff that’s getting fucked and I want just one think like I only want this one thing” and I gestured with my hand that the thing was air between us or a fly in air between us “I want this thing to be mine and safe”

Evan said to me while we were leaving Aldi “It’s just occurred to me that when you find a woman attractive you don’t once consider what she’d look like with     cum    on her face –  like, that’s not even a     consideration.”

Coming on their face leaving a red stain on a bedsheet somewhere but the hymen is actually     more      resilient than they tell you in grade school

Our middle dog was called Gracie well      really “Our Bittersweet Amazing Grace” because for some reason AKC names have to be long. She wasn’t spayed so she would always     bleed all over the light brown living room floor where I spilled rubber cement in middle school

The first time she went into     heat (ugh) she had puppies, one stillborn and seven still     born so each consecutive time she bled the     boy dog    wouldn’t shut up about it and she would      nest even though my dad reminded her “Dog, you’re not having more puppies.”

That post went around the internet again where there’s a picture of the tendons inside your heart your     heart strings     or something and did you know you can die     die of just a broken heart