Arrhythmia
This happens in September of a year
when the garden just keeps going.
Eggplants and peppers we never saw soften
drop. The squirrels take their share.
In the mornings we find bitten fists
of tomato oozing on the chaise.
Every nine or ten beats my heart thuds too hard,
hurling itself at my sternum like I swallowed
the sound of one train car bashing another.
To sleep I have to forget my chest. But how
to get out from under one’s body?
I roll in place like a fishing lure, then lie
on my belly. I can’t muffle the sound of myself.
The cats stop sleeping on my side.
In my family help was just a habit.
So I look up heart stuff online.
Ischemic, Greek for blood kept back,
means there’s a we, i.e., we see this all the time.
Idiopathic means it’s only me.
Every night I speak to my thuddy heart.
I even say I’ll call a doctor tomorrow
if it’ll let me rest. When the sun comes up I take
my coffee to our little jungle. I pinch blooms
from the basil and resent the finches.
After some weeks lying in the dark
lying (I never make the call), my heart calms,
unthuds, just beats. I won.
I feel lucky but unforgiven.
Can’t stop listening at my own walls.
Outside it’s time to harvest what’s left.
No one disturbed the collards, which look
like they could house a cabbage but prefer
to not. We keep our hearts to ourselves.
I snap stems and bind greens in tough bouquets,
cut the garden down to dirt.
when the garden just keeps going.
Eggplants and peppers we never saw soften
drop. The squirrels take their share.
In the mornings we find bitten fists
of tomato oozing on the chaise.
Every nine or ten beats my heart thuds too hard,
hurling itself at my sternum like I swallowed
the sound of one train car bashing another.
To sleep I have to forget my chest. But how
to get out from under one’s body?
I roll in place like a fishing lure, then lie
on my belly. I can’t muffle the sound of myself.
The cats stop sleeping on my side.
In my family help was just a habit.
So I look up heart stuff online.
Ischemic, Greek for blood kept back,
means there’s a we, i.e., we see this all the time.
Idiopathic means it’s only me.
Every night I speak to my thuddy heart.
I even say I’ll call a doctor tomorrow
if it’ll let me rest. When the sun comes up I take
my coffee to our little jungle. I pinch blooms
from the basil and resent the finches.
After some weeks lying in the dark
lying (I never make the call), my heart calms,
unthuds, just beats. I won.
I feel lucky but unforgiven.
Can’t stop listening at my own walls.
Outside it’s time to harvest what’s left.
No one disturbed the collards, which look
like they could house a cabbage but prefer
to not. We keep our hearts to ourselves.
I snap stems and bind greens in tough bouquets,
cut the garden down to dirt.
Sept / Oct 2023
S.K. Hisega (she/her) is a queer writer, soapmaker, and attorney living in Minneapolis. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte and is the poetry editor for Qu Magazine. Her work appears in Foglifter, Spout, Booglit, and elsewhere.
Art: Cam Pietralunga. Untitled 28. Acrylic on canvas.