Measuring a Broken Heart
A Poem on Grief
I wrote this poem a month after my dad died. My doctor had me wear a heart monitor to track some arrhythmia I had been having.
We decided my heart was technically okay. Exhaustion and grief (and a bit of menopause) were playing with my body and causing a few odd beats.
But while wearing the recording instrument, I began to wonder what would happen if the monitor could track my heartbreak as well as my heartbeats.
There is a monitor recording my heart.
I wonder as it tracks the beats and rhythms,
the pulses and fluctuations of my flesh,
can it also record the pain that is lodged
in its hidden valves and ventricles?
Does it feel the pounding anger
or the slow grief that infuses my veins?
Does it mark the crushing sadness,
or the irregular beats of a life I no longer recognize?
What machine can trace the fault lines of a broken heart?
How it cracks with tragedy and unforeseen loss?
How it wears from the constant drip of a thousand sorrows?
And even if the heartbreak is mapped?
Then what?
How shall I heal this heart worn down by love?
Shall I stitch it with silver thread from discarded gowns or patch it with forgotten glue?
Or do I wait in the silence of night for it to regrow itself?
Once cell, once centimeter at a time.
Lacing itself with the memories of lives
that have passed and love that refuses to be forgotten.
