Make a fist. Go on. This is the size of your human heart. When Cesar, the Dominican doctor I sleep with Delivered this secret into my ear I imagined greasy cardiologists: The kind that sign prescription pads “I Heart You” And wait with baited breath for the flush of red That would only prove the joke; They might turn this fist into a line: Something to make blood cascade through veins And the Drum of Life syncopate distress in Morse code— Dots and dashes with the ecstatic nuclear intensity of exploding stars So he can slip his hand onto your animated chest and say, “Oh Baby. That’s normal. I would know.” But this is no mere miracle of modern medicine’s artisan skill of explanation; This fist is hour-glass, time in a bottle, A tome to bury the chronicle of beating Because your heart grows as your fist does. Your heart stops…and you release— Fingers free to reach out, touch, applaud, caress…pleasure… Cesar is powering small cities When I ask him about the babies he cares for at Bronx Lutheran-- Suspended in plastic like unclaimed, loveless collector’s items, Life’s existence more reinforced than practiced. Cesar holds up his thumb. “This is the size of my average patient’s fist,” he says. “This is the size of my average patient’s heart.” Touching, applauding, caressing Reminds me of my own small hands; Companions of my tiny, inexperienced heart. These hands I received from my father, From generations of father’s fathers’ fathers Going back to the single-digit digits pleasuring ivory keys— My ancestor Johann Sebastian Sliding a sixth voice into overstuffed fugue To fill the miniscule place in his chest Where a normal sized heart should be… Perhaps it is my family taint to be heartsick; To reach and reach for the beautiful moments Hoping to swell my heart into adulthood Only to have it crack under the strain. Rushed in on a gurney, oxygen starved, turning blue; The doctors dance around me screaming medical jargon. “Stat.” “Epi push.” “CPR.” “Triage.” “Insurance.” “Stat.” “Stat.” “Stat!” “Doctor, look at his hands!” the nurse exclaims, shortly before fainting— The thought of my tiny heart pulsing under this weight Is far too much for the poor girl to handle… They try to fix the rips, the tears I am running deep into my chest But their hands are too large My heart is too inadequate to be repaired Their instruments crush ventricles, aortas And I am drowning in the blood Pumped by my child heart into the open adult wound. “There is nothing we can do,” the doctor says gravely. “This is medicine beyond our capabilities. You need a specialist—” Which is when Cesar, the medicine man, custodian of the weak and unexposed The man who kept alive the hearts of a generation on the tip of his thumb Who keeps the sun rising at the dawn of life Bursts, he bursts, yes, into the room Vaults onto the operating table And shoves his bare hands into my chest The knowledge of ancient healers guiding him Past muscle and fat and ribs and lungs To tiny, struggling, diminishing…me; And with electric hands Like Jesus when He raised Lazarus from his grave Carries me back to life. The size of my fist hasn’t changed, But the weight of my heart has. I notice Cesar has small hands, like mine, But when I slip my hand into his, The shape we make, skin to skin, its size Pumps something powerful through my veins. Cesar doesn’t always go for overblown statements like this He’s usually tired from his rounds: Saving lives has a way of silencing you. But he did think it was sweet… When I told him he left fingerprints inside me.

You never slept in my bed. I only slept in yours, days in yours Where you played yo-yo with my body and frowned. “You have to go,” you’d say. “Work. Life.” And then pull me back, Wrapped around your finger; ring-locked. I see you as a tearful lover on a train station platform Hair flat, skin sagging slightly Pulled by the…by the…by the…humidity Of this Great War. I am the beautiful young soldier, the sparkling boy, The angel anointed; Halo a reassuring smile of death-mask sadness. You reach up, fingers bleeding And I am reminded how you stab yourself with needles Sewing your bedsheets into hot air balloons To drift over the front lines and away. You never slept in my bed But there are places I find, Creases, stains of blood from broken skin fingertips Peppering my sheets like islands in our history That will never come out in the wash. In your bed I never dreamed While mine carried secrets and nightmares. Your bed was mine, for a time But it was never me that slept with you. I’ve never known anyone who could be that…silent. Still I wonder, some nights Or days like this when the smell of bleach Washes away unanchored thoughts and malformed sensations If I talked in my sleep My sleep in your bed Told you my secrets Told you, told you, told you why… And you still never heard me.