Nonfiction by Sandra Marilyn
Lying in the bed next to you, the summer breeze softly poofing the curtains, the night is so quiet I can hear time moving by without us. My head on your chest. My ear to your heart that beats with the consistency of waves stroking the sand. I want to see inside you. I want to understand how it feels to live inside your body, to see how you manage the life that was fashioned by the uniqueness of your experiences, as different from my own as another language.
Another night voices with edges so sharp they could slice soft belly skin. All my fears, losses, demands, unfilled chasms, unjustified expectations, thicken the air that is already crowded with the sounds of every woman who ever cried before us in the rooms of this antique house. Women in long skirts moaned their sorrow faintly to harmonize with my own. My longing collapses me. Your heart is as closed as your rigid face. Your body backs away from my touch.
Another day you walk through the door after entertaining the neighbor’s blind cat and voluntarily washing the pots and pans they left behind when they rushed out to catch a plane. You sing a high-pitched nonsense song to the silly wag-tail dog, who listens with tall ears. You are gathering your tools to work in the sidewalk gardens you have created just for the joy of passers-by. Your heart is so big I wonder if it will burst through and float away, too huge to be contained. A surreal orb valiantly competing with the sun.
And today I sit in the darkened to gray room in the cardio wing of the hospital listening to the forever buzzing and clicking of the machines that will assess the competency of your heart, the viability of your life. The technician sits at a slight angle between you, reclining on the table, and the monitor where the graphs are changing every second, a festive march of flashing neon colors. Your heart is beating a percussive background in sync with the lightshow on the screen. I shift my chair to see the images over the shoulder of the technician, the images that have no meaning to me beside the riveting spectacle of their color and movement.
And then she finds exactly the right position on your chest and there it is. There is your heart, magnified and magnificent, pulsing on the screen. A splendid red-brown muscle. Squeezing, opening, squeezing, opening, squeezing, opening with a sensuous loyalty.
I was presented with the most precious thing, the most personal thing you could offer me. The very essence of your being, of your spirit, exposing itself to me. I remember the years of needing to see you better, to grasp your true meaning, to see inside your heart. And here in this room hidden away from the street noise and the sunshine, and the people forever grasping for happiness and meaning, I could see inside your heart.
As you lay almost sleeping, hypnotized by the sounds, soothed by the darkened room, unable to see what I saw on the screen, unaware of my emotional journey into your heart. My hand on my own heart, tears gathering, I had never felt closer to you, never loved you more.
In a world of isolated people, Sandra Marilyn cherishes the love that has sustained her. This love has been sending its roots deeper and deeper for decades and yet there is still more to learn, more to feel.
Read more of Sandra’s flash nonfiction essays on The Bluebird Word from October 2022 and June 2024.
