The Failing Heart

"This is what it is to be
a modern woman," I read, once,
"in today's society
you're always too much and yet never enough."
It rang true, piercingly, in the weary, striving,
always shying-back
depths of me - the way it seems
I'm overachieving but never adequate
because, as I've been told,
"maybe if you tried a little more" - were just a little better at everything -
"you wouldn't make people feel like they can't keep up with you."
Intimidating? How absurd.
I can't catch my balance; how could I stand, let alone withstand -
how the heck would I outstand?
"Imposter syndrome
is also a symptom
of the modern woman. She can't believe
she's truly achieved
anything good."
Well, because - wouldn't true achievement
mean I could rest?


John's heart is a modern woman.
Basically.
It's always pumping too much,
but never quite enough.
John has heart failure. The one-way valves
on either side of his left ventricle
have rusted halfway open, halfway shut,
and so his heart works overtime to keep up
with his cells screaming for blood
and his vasculature begging for a break.
John can't help it - like all us girls, he just wants to live
another day, or two, without ceaselessly thinking about it.
He wants to breathe deep and not be told
his lungs are fighting his heart for control
of his mean arterial pressure;
he wants to forget he's breathing
without receiving
one more upbeat lecture
on the benefits of incentive spirometry.
John wants to sit up and not be dizzy,
he wants to lie down and not pass out,
he wants to eat without needing high flow,
he wants to sleep without blood pressure alarms
reminding him that he's finally resting.
John is so alive - how can his heart be failing?
He just wants the imposter in his chest
to be enough to let him rest.

"This is a hard world," I tell John, wordlessly,
lacing my presumptuous fingers through his swollen ones,
begging him audaciously, silently,
to accept my stammering sympathy.
I mean, I can breathe and walk and eat and sleep
thoughtlessly
and simultaneously contemplate
how to be more, and less, good at being me.
John just thinks
and wants
and, interruptedly, dreams
that one day this modern woman trying
to live inside his tightening chest
will get a new valve, or two
so he can forget about her, be one with her, for even a moment.

John squeezes my fingers, weakly,
yet the strength of his hand stills the universe
and for this moment, I can rest.
For this moment, John has given me
a new valve.