Open Heart

Three to six hours. 

Three to six hours is the average time open heart surgery takes. 

Yet my chest has been open for days.

I lay on the operating table unable to help myself as I feel the cold air touch my beating heart. 

Blood seeps out of me and runs along my chest,   

I look at what they’re doing to me, I feel sick. 

It's as if they don’t realize-

I know. 

My chest feels empty.

I feel like I’ve forgotten how to breathe and when I think about it too much I’m sure I’ll puke. 

There’s too much space between my heart and the world now. 

All open and exposed.

I reach to try and cover myself, but I can’t.

Deep down inside I know if I move to cover myself I could develop an infection. 

Each time I flinch the skin on my chest tears stretching the hole wider.  

I don’t think I can stay here much longer. 

I am cold and afraid.

It hurts. 

But not in a way that feels like I have just been cut open.

In fact that was my favorite part.

Now it is an ache. 

A pain that eats away at me from my throat to my stomach. 

It consumes me so much that it becomes all I know, 

all I feel. 

I wish I could go back to when I didn’t notice.

Back to when I didn’t know you were slowly cutting me open.

Preparing to expose me to the outside world.

For so long it felt like I had an extra layer of protection.  

Your body settled between my heart and the world.

But what I didn’t realize then

is that you slowly tore me open.