the heart

I found a beating heart on the sidewalk one day. It was on its last legs, and what little blood it had left had drained onto the rough cement. I tried to make it as comfortable as possible with a bit of moss and the few dead leaves I found nearby. But, there is little comfort to be had in the last few breaths of life. I offered to listen as long as it wanted, and this seemed to bring more comfort to the thing than the finest sheets or the plumpest pillows might have given. It started talking in a low mumble so that I had to put my head close up against it to make out the words. The tale was long and vast and told of many things, some of which may have been true. Sorrows so deep that I no longer wondered how a heart so young could come to such an end so soon. Whether the memories told to me were embellished or not, I can never be sure, but the fact that any memory lives in the mind is enough to have it take a toll on one’s well being – whether or not the memory is fabricated or made from whole cloth. When the heart was done speaking, I kept still and silent for several seconds. In the wake of the soft, singsong narrative that I had just listened to, the silence held a kind of pregnancy. After a few gaping moments, the heart whispered, “I think I am losing my mind…I think I am losing my mind.” It had a far off, watered look in its eyes and then it went completely still. Those small, imperceptible flutterings and touches of life that go unnoticed save when they are not there, all stopped. I buried the heart in the grass next to the sidewalk and walked on.