How much pain can a human heart hold?

Does it stretch beyond boundaries, eventually snapping at the core

How many beats until you are able to sleep?

Eyes wide open against the night, memories like a movie on the ceiling

Tears buried so deep in the body

that sand falls down your cheeks instead

You ask yourself all the questions

Nobody answers back

How many breaths until the lungs give up?

saying, “No, no more inhaling this. You do this on your own.”

How much blood left in those veins?

How much sinew and muscle left in your chest?

How hard does your heart need to work before it breaks?

How many times is it going to get ripped out of your chest

by loving or losing or living?

And how many times will it recover, regenerate the cells

build back the muscles in the ventricles

the aorta

the highway for blood and lifeforce

the carrier for everything you know.

How much pain can a human heart hold?

and why

do you keep trying

to find out?

2/24/22 – AW