ECMO

Dear dear,

Few things are as holy as holding the hollow lumen of a heart. Here, the beat does not bow. The only master is the winter of metal, the machine that stops the pounding of the meaty tires on that long, lively road. When I first shadowed cardiac surgery, I saw this sacredness splayed out in front of me. Yet among the medical murder and against the still heart, I could only help but ask if this small frog of a thing in a stream of red was all there was to love?

In my own hole, that bare bloody beat, I feel the answer surface sometimes. It starts as a clot. There is a small catch in my breath. A little nothing. Then it reaches my brain. Havoc reigns. I am given the best vision I have ever seen, a ray of every colour, especially those not yet gazed upon, before it takes me to the dark. Love is this cycle, the light and loss and least of all, love.

This is cyclical, and it must be. With you, a swelling hate brews. But deep down, down where there is no downhill anymore, I think you may still like me some. I do not know how much. This matters little. For in that circle that brings us together, in the way that an ocean is connected to the tiniest pond with the rain, there is something still. Severe the flesh. Break the ribs. Destroy the muscle. And yet in the wreckage there is the heart, even if it does not live.

At the low point of this round, at its sharpest corner now, I need you to know that I wish to hold you whole. I must savour every bit, I have to grab the parts that will fly away. How? By knowing even if I lose it all, I will have you little by little by little. I will repair the wound. I will seal the blood. I will beat again.

Always yours,
Kacper