No Matter. No Heart.

Absolute silence greets me when I place my hand against my cold chest, searching for a familiar da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

My brows draw together and the corners of my lips tilt downwards; this is a new feeling. Although, I’m not sure it can be described with that word- if you feel nothing, is that itself a feeling? (Can you feel numbness, the ultimate oxymoron?)

No matter. I must get going!

I roll myself out of bed, only noticing my feet have hit the floor when my eyes track the movement. Is the wood cold? 

I stretch, my empty cavity of a torso reaching up towards the ceiling. When my spine has stretched to a satisfying pop and my ribs curl around empty air to the point of discomfort, I lower my arms and begin to start my day. 

Coffee. Brush my teeth. Search. Wash my face. Brush my hair. Find clothes. Look for it. 

I pat down my bed, locating my phone still attempting senselessly to soothe an unknown someone with white noise. I frown again. That’s one, but my count’s not over.

I’m dressed now, and can be a fully functioning…

Where are they?

Oh, there are my keys! Found them. Now, I can be a fully functioning…

Where is it?

I decide I have to leave anyway, and tell myself I’ll remember what or why I’m having this nagging sense of loss in the back of my head in the car. On my way. On my way to… 

My habits with the timbre of my therapist’s voice urge me to run through my count, insisting that I’ll feel better, more whole when I do. One: phone. Two: keys. Three: wallet. Was there a fourth or fifth, I wonder? Must not be, since I have found no other necessity with me (and I couldn’t be missing anything, or at least I dearly hope not). 

No matter (nothing really matters anyways now). I have all of my belongings now!

The engine rumbles beneath my seat as I pull out of the driveway, tires pulling down the worn asphalt. I click on the radio. I hum along to the slow sounds of the R & B station. My pitch is flat. 

I pull into my work’s parking lot and roll into a parking spot at a slight angle, one of my tires just over the top corner of the line (it’s no matter, no matter at all; there’s no other cars here). As the car stops, something tumbles down from the back seat and rolls under my front seat, clicking against the metal workings under the chair. My hand closes around a tiny sliver bracelet, the mid-morning sun catching on the small initial charm dangling off the cold chain. The letter B glints at me. 

B. 

Oh, this tiny, tiny bracelet, made for such a tiny, tiny wrist! How was this left in my car? I stare at it for several silent moments (I can feel my blood rushing through my cold veins, but I hear no pulse, so it must be being pushed through by some other muscle, some other thing indeed) before ultimately deciding I simply must get on with my day! 

I stop 10 feet in front of my building door when I remember it’s Sunday. I don’t have work today. I’m still not sure what I have today, but it’s sure not work or a heart so I decide I must go find something to do!

My car is rumbling again beneath me, and I drive. My hands drift along the worn leather wheel as I turn left, right, left, right. I drive and drive, and drive some more, humming lowly to the quiet music station. 

A red light flashes in front of me as I slam on the brakes at the sudden stop in traffic, snapping me awake (I was having just an awful dream, wasn’t I?). I gasp, reeling, tumbling, falling. I’m missing something; I’m sure of it now. My count was off, I am wrong, I am missing something. I feel what I think is my first heartbeat of the day, a small thump, but I slowly realize I’m missing my heart and that must be the sound of my reserve breaking. My chest heaves with unspoken pain and loud, angry breaths. How could I be so careless? I slam my hands on my wheel. How could I forget? The one thing I needed to live, to love, and I’ve lost it. The car in front of me advances but my foot is solid on my brakes. A honk behind me tells me I’m holding up the line and need to move on but without my heart to carry along the message from my brain to my foot to move, I simply cannot go forward. (A pity indeed.) 

Honks are echoing around me, stretching my sanity into a thin strand of nothing that I am desperately grasping on to. I suck in a deep breath, hoping that enough air will inflate my chest cavity enough to fill the hole left by my missing heart and slowly release my foot from the brakes. 

I’m going to find my heart. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know my heart is somewhere, and she needs to be rescued. I can feel her suffocating, smothered under the weight of my failure to find her already. 

I pull into a dusky parking lot (time flies when you’re heartless) and roll the car perpendicularly across two empty parking spaces. I stumble out of the car. I begin walking through the grass.

Where is it, where is it, where is she, where is it, where is she…

Ah. There she is. 

I fall to my knees, the corners of my lips stretching skywards for the first time in months. My hands press against the dirt, and I can almost feel it again. 

There, six feet underneath the headstone, I can feel the subtle da-dum, da-dum, da dum of my heart. 

I release the air trapped in my lungs in a whoosh and grip twin handfuls of the dirt in an unconscious attempt to get closer to her. I slide my feet out from under me to sit in a criss-cross position. My cold fingers release the dirt to reach up and brush debris from the name engraved on the headstone. 

Bea. My heart. 

My chest is cavernous, but it feels less bone-chilling now that I’ve found the answer as to why. My heart was torn out from my chest, ripped away by an illness that ripped the life out of my baby, my heart. My Bea. 

I place the tiny charm bracelet on the chilled stone (I didn’t mean to tuck it in my pocket, but you know a mother’s instinct to collect for her children never dies, even if her children do) and feel a warm tear drift down my cheek. How I long to absorb my heart back into my chest, to tuck her up in my arms and soothe her. How I long to brush her thin strands of hair back from her lovely face and tell her it’s alright, I’ve found her. I lost her for just a moment (and please don’t be mad Mommy forgot for a moment, she is so very tired) but now I’ve found her. 

I spend the night curled in the dirt and grass, terrified to move my ear from the warm ground where I can feel the steady beat of my heart. It reminds me of when I used to be small and young enough to lay my head against my own mother’s chest and feel the life in her heart (this is the way mothers and daughters are meant to lie: ear to heart, not ear to dirt) and I feel my tears turn the dirt around me to mud. 

I wake, cold and empty, in my bed. Placing my hand against my chest, I feel a strange lack of warmth or beats and wonder why it feels like I’m missing something.