Extra Beats

a Valentine's poem, of a sort

one of my babies, but not actually the one I’m writing about

Extra Beats

Today I paced in a dark room  
and watched on a dark screen  
a white line that was the valve  

of your ventricle beating  
out an irregular rhythm  
with extra beats.

A little door opening and  
closing and opening and closing  
as you do when you wildly,  

repeatedly, slam your bedroom door,  
my rambunctious child.
I heard the hoosh and slosh and squish 

of that little muscle now pushing blood 
through your not-so-little-anymore body.  
That beat that began more than  

eight years ago now— though  
next week we celebrate your  
eighth birthday. It began

in the dark womb, a flicker  
in a clump of cells that was  
you that began one day in  

the secret dark to have rhythm:  
beat beat beat against  
the walls of my inmost self.

Hoosh-hoosh—You were so small
 when  I saw the flicker 
for the first time. You were  

within. And I saw your heart  
before I saw your face,  
the grainy white beat on a dark  

screen that made my heart sing.

---

Once I found myself in the cardiologist’s office on Valentines Day with my almost 8-year old son. That boy will be 15 next week. Anyway, this is a love poem to that child, and more specifically to his beating heart. The actual, physical organ, which I don’t think gets quite enough attention in the rush to make it a metaphor.