Heart
I heard the tiniest of heartbeats. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. It wasn’t a Tell-Tale heartbeat, nothing frightening like that. This heartbeat had a soothing rhythm. From what I could tell, the beat came from the trunk of an old tree just off the path where I had been walking. I approached the trunk and put my ear up to its grooves. I listened. No heartbeat. I waited, and then I heard it again—faint, in the distance. A little faster now. Badumpbadumpbadump. I followed the sound and ended up at another tree—this one full of crows and their caw caw cawing. “Shhhh,” I called out. “I am listening for a heart.” One of the crows looked down at me and laughed, or that’s how I perceived it. The crows flew off one by one, and I waited for the heartbeat. When it finally started up again, it seemed to be coming from underneath the snow. So I dug down with my mittened hands. No heart. I sat completely still. Me. The snow. The tree. The crows cawing in the distance. And then I heard it again. But this time, I did not go searching. I sat still. I did nothing. I just listened.
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