Cardio/Post-examination

after Isabella DeSendi

Because we began where his ache
was small, even curable, only a handful

of nerve cells sliced open like a fruit.
Because he loved me the way a dying man

would love a child, frail & soft-reaching,
his hands barely able to grasp my own. Because

at first he was healthy even with the hemp.
I remember my mum’s fear or was it her

disappointment as she flushed those
dried leaves into the sink. I watched her do it.

I was to be her fourth eyes. Her witness
to what a man’s hunger has done to a man.

That was a day after his chest examination.
How, we’d prayed for a smaller wound.

Told ourselves it had to be food allergy,
a small ache on the left of his chest,

pneumonia, anything, until the doctor
said his heart was starting to fail. So he

walked home blue, terrified, swore he was
ready to hoard what was left. As if the first sign

of dying is a desperation to live. As if he
was on the end of a rope no one else could

pull. One time, I recall, I saw him wide
mouthed, forcing himself to breathe. When,

that eve of Father’s Day, he kept quivering
until he threw his food, we were told he was

“withdrawing”, & that was the sign.
Think of it as a black hole. As a rusty bridge

in between deprivation & want. His body
was learning the hard way but learning anyway.

The human heart is approximately
the size of a clenched fist. Which is to say

there’s a kind of violence only the body
understands. Like that one time they shoved

a pipe into his chest, a procedure
they explained, would take drugs fluids

straight to his heart. It is true: you know
a dying animal by how much violence it’s willing

to bear. Even now, I imagine him,
his quiet groans as he attempts to breathe,

the joy in his eyes as he succeeds,
the disbelief.