i touched a heart

I touched a heart,

a hole between the walls that beat,

where oxygen slipped, and murmurs meet.

I watched gloved fingers,

suture closure into a four-year-old body,

while mine, bruised from a love gone rotten,

reached for the self it once held often.

She whispered, okay,

while the surgeons moved like music, okay, ten years of knowing exactly what to do, okay, a rhythm she gave herself to stay brave, okay.

I watched a hole close in hers,

while something opened in mine.

I thought I knew their hearts,

tasted something bitter in what once felt sweet. I could’ve sworn I touched maybe a few, clinging desperately to a beat I once knew.

But as forever unraveled into never again,

they no longer recognized mine,

refused to come to its defense, said instead it was too intense.

Maybe they sensed,

my spine had grown too tall, to keep folding at their feet.

I broke a heart.

Only to find it was my own.

We restarted a heart,

on my first shift around the clock,

wearing 24 hours beneath my eyes,

I pierced the chest wall,

laced the tube and cleared the air,

but silence had already entered there.

Her head in my hands, okay,

I learned the stillness required to hold C-spine, okay,

while the room slowed around me, okay.

The seniors knew what I did not.

My hands were steady,

but my pulse betrayed me.

Blood filled the bowl of her ear

my gloves,

hemotympanum.

I thought it was makeup

but it marked, not adorned,

raccoon eyes.

Only then did I realize the brain was gone,

a heart now beating again

only because we called it home.

I held the body,

but no one came to roam.

After the first resuscitation,

her husband stood, numb in sensation, unsure to stay, to wait, or to pray,

We just wanted to do laundry today.

Grief not yet begun,

but was already underway. He knew she’d go again, just didn’t know when,

or what he could say.

It took him longer,

to arrive at her death.

I recognized a broken heart,

as it looked for a place to rest,

trying to catch a breath.

I held a hand,

that I wasn’t sure would take mine,

set my palm beside hers,

and let her decide.

We were worried about meningitis,

though her symptoms didn’t scream crisis.

The labs, like a whisper, offered admission,

I could now lean on my intuition.

She gripped it so fast,

I wondered if she’d been waiting all day,

for someone to offer their hand at last.

The needle pressed in, okay,

and she didn’t let go, okay,

her breath caught, okay,

then fell into rhythm with mine, okay,

and the room held its breath.

We all felt the energy settle,

the moment her body softened,

just enough to stay still.

And in that quiet closeness,

I felt it like a hush,

how healing can ripple,

through two people at once.

I held a hand worn thin by time,

its grasp unsure,

like the thoughts he lost mid-climb.

He turned away from the LP, too lost to weigh,

what we meant to help him keep at bay.

He’d once stood in uniform,

that day he let me stand beside him.

Even while we sang together,

to the Elvis tune I played to make it better,

the LP couldn't reach the full depth,

the needle paused in waiting,

for his body to ease,

and the room held its breath,

as this was our second attempt.

We were all worried that he may,

resist the care that could slow decay.

Trapped between his will,

and a mind too clouded to hold still.

I shook his son’s hand,

a coincidence, weeks later, at another hospital,

on another rotation.

A rose bloomed just above the knuckles,

inked in memory of his mother,

who once slow danced,

to the songs we all hummed

while we endured that moment together.

He told me he was here because the shunt had gone in,

a step toward treatment that we had feared to imagine.

how still we’d sat

i guess sometimes

what moves us most

is our hearts humming

toward the same goal

I listened to a heart,

as its owner kicked back.

My probe had stirred them from a nap.

While we listened to it quickly beating,

I beamed as I asked who I was meeting.

I spoke my mother tongue,

to women who never expected her to arrive in a white coat.

They took their vaccines, trusting me on recognition alone.

It’s easier to listen to your heart,

when you can recognize it walking around.

I touched a womb, in a world

where our bodies are treated as parts,

where the desire to bear children

is politicized into agenda,

where care is carved by policy,

and tenderness is made a target.

I shed a tear,

the first time I saw a baby arrive,

the kind of pain breaks then remakes you.

Her partner kissed her forehead,

held her like something sacred.

I held her hand,

offered soft words with bright eyes.

And in that moment,

something steadied, and my shoulders began to rise.

Caring fully, the very thing that once left me bare,

is also the reason I’m still there:

to love our mothers as they stand,

and acknowledge the worlds they cradle,

in belly, back, and hand.

But still, my heart tenses

as the news tickers roll.

A fertility clinic bombed,

threatening a future, I’ve longed for.

A reminder that our bodies

are vessels others still try to control.

I carried a heavy heart,

when I met a mother

whose silence spoke more than any chart.

Past medical history includes: a stroke,

a seizure in status,

an amniotic fluid embolism,

complicated by a life

shaped through incredible strife.

She didn’t speak much, her stare far away.

She pulled out her feeding tubes, and refused every tray,

enduring more than one 0-calorie day.

As I fed her pudding, spoon by spoon,

her giggle rose, lighting the room.

Each time she smiled, as if to reclaim,

some part of herself,

hearing her daughter’s name.

My heart is learning to know its own pace,

to trust in rhythm

not born of a race,

to cradle both trembling

and moments of grace.

I remind myself often:

if I am to find love again,

let it begin in recognition.

Not the stutter of old arrhythmias,

but a breath both bodies already know.

A prayer once offered,

by a woman who’d known ache,

and still fostered

the faith that peace would follow systole,

in the hush we call diastole.

To the giants that braced my spine so I could stand straighter,

to the village that held my hand while my spirit roared,

and to the hearts that walked this path in time,

I carry you with every pulse of mine.