On valentine’s day, I watched my first heart stop.
I watched the monitor dance as I thrust my aching palms onto his sternum.

He lay there, still
while his body was rocked and jabbed and compressed

in between, he seemed.

His body still moaning and murmuring with every crushing push, his vocal cords still rubbing, his eyelids still parted, his veins still leaking a deep fervent red. And yet, afterwards
a pat on the shoulder
“he was basically dead already.”

Basically dead.

Give me the mental flexibility, plasticity to grasp this realized purgatory.
Help me know whether I was helping
or if I was simply practicing the craft
Help me unravel his consciousness so that I can see you, death
how you seeped and bled into his soul
insidiously
wading
tiptoeing
through his tissues.

How you made time, our conceited, inviolable measure of truth, irrelevant.

“Remember that moment” another pat on the shoulder. “Your first death.”

On valentine’s day, I watched my first heart stop.
But as time will tell you
I missed it.