My Hematologist Listens to My Love Songs
As he daintily places the stethoscope on my skin.
First the heart, my left bundle branch block(ed) heart
where no electricity has seen the light of day.
His breath is fig-marmalade sweet. His eyes
show where love hurt him bad. There’s great sadness
in the way he holds the metal under my double D
man breasts. He is lost to the rhythms of my soon
to be defibrillated heart. He tells me I will not die
from this, but that I should try and get more exercise.
Go out for short walks, get up often, and flex my body
so that my legs won’t atrophy. I love this man like
I have loved all of my doctors, male or female. They
know I am not human, they can feel it but don’t say it.
And I appreciate the confidence by which they pretend
that I am already dead in their hands, a familiar ghost
they’ve come to depend on, as if I often ravage their ears
with my own stories of excess or how the first responders
at Chernobyl rushed in with all their power only to become
fireflies in the night, flashing their nuptial invitations
in the dark of fields. The human body feels terror first
in the hair follicles, or at least that’s what I feel when I look
in the mirror and catch glimpses of my sixty-year-old self.
How we got here, I do not know, but I can tell you it’s been
a wild ride. First in the dirt of Havana, then later in the cold
of Madrid, and now in the humidity of North Florida, where
the birds are falling dead from the skies. I can tell he is done.
He tells me I won’t be dying today, and I kiss him on his lips.
