Ablation

Inside the Northern General they’re trying to burn away a small piece of your heart. I want to know which bit, how much and what it holds. My questions live between what doctors call the heart and what we mean by it, wide as the gap between brain and mind. And in our lineage of bypassed hearts we should be grateful for the literal. I know my heart is your heart — good for running, not much else and later as you sit up in your borrowed bed I get the whole thing wrong, call it oblation. Offering or sacrifice. As if you’d given something up. As if their tiny fire was ritual and we could warm by it.