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Your heart, his sleeve
Across the climate
controlled corridor
I reach out to grasp
the hand,
scrubbed clean, sure
and warm,
that minutes before
held your heart:
barely pulsing, not
quite still,
chilled out and
by-passed,
slit and stitched,
linked distal and proximal
to a slice of
someone else’s life.
A clinical reverence
defers,
detached, before
this hand,
all precision and
delicate technique,
all hydraulic
ligaments and
cogs of finely
articulating joints:
moved by the
regulated synaptic bursts
of a practiced mind,
trained second by second
on the design of
someone else’s life.
Across the strangely
shimmering space
a palm touches on my
shoulder
and suddenly I’m all
there, aware:
there’s a heart on
his sleeve by my sleeve,
vessels entwined,
valves flowering and budding,
strength swishing
from chamber to chamber,
feeding these
fingers that, feeling, forge
connections to
someone else’s life.
© Helen
Ramoutsaki 2007
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