When you tell me you are writing about your heart, ask me for metaphors in triplicate, I suggest cake, sedimentary rock, the earth’s boiling core, knowing that your sadness is beyond the power of written language.  The chanting of indigenous rainforest tribes might capture the essence of your suffering.

When you drive to Mississippi because your lungs are crowded with Midwestern flora and fauna, persistent mold that grows in viper tongues and slithers into the basement while you sleep, I know your family doctor has pills, breathing treatments, the right tone of voice to assuage the fire in your chest.

When you buzz my phone at five in the morning, with descriptions of coffee, hungry dogs, weather forecasts, admonitions to eat eggs, I breathe easier, knowing that I wait for other words.  Notification that your mother’s genetic disposition towards congenital heart disease caught up with you at last.

When you tell me the story of your birth, I see the Eifel Tower outside your hospital window, a waterfall of nurses who speak with voices so luscious that every sound imitates star shine. You carry it with you for 64 years, you bring it out today, you breathe in la langue de l’amour, and blow out all the candles.

– Beth Gordon