[ART] I want to see my beating heart

photo: mi amore, jstfd.com

She leaned her head against the cold bus window, soothing the searing pain that plagued so many of her days. Her large gray eyes stared dejectedly through the rain drops that had been left to lie on the glass. She was listening, eavesdropping really, to the chatter of other students. I feel an ache inside me, she thought to herself, Why wont it come out. Her blonde hair, slightly damp from the walk through the early February rain, tucked itself into the collar of her long black peacoat. The coat was a gift from her mother around christmas time, purchased spur of the moment in a flurry of shopping trips in New Hampshire during the winter break. As she glanced down to the book she was pretending to read, she noticed that the coat had accumulated a dusting of the ever-present short, white dog hairs that swarmed even her most carefully guarded articles. The book was a used copy, "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", an assignment for her senior capstone course, and although there were two "used" stickers clinging to the binding, it didn't look to her as if it had seen much use. She read the first line, for the third time, "Dear son: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes…"

"Sev has this mindset that if he comes up with a plan to march, people are just going to march with him. He doesn't think about other people's motives and priorities".

"Yeah, but you cant just sit around waiting…"

"True. Sevs an adventurer. He is doing it 'cause he likes it".

She muses on their naive tangents, Why don't I start getting involved in activism again? What am I doing with the magazine? What if I am trying to force something that isn't there?

This question had come like a reoccurring dream as predictable as eating or defacting, as unyielding as the Haitian earthquake, or Hurricane Katrina. Many of her thoughts operate in this way, obsessive, unrelenting; she was practicing learning to let go.

I'm there because I want to be there. How could I be forcing my own life? I am not going out of my way, I am not starving. I am taking it step by step. Day by day. I cannot ignore that which I want.

Her mind drifted away from the plotting students, the rain soaked window, the discussion of Pakistan and the shape of california. She let her large gray eyes wander to the blank first page of Franklin's Autobiography. And she thought. She thought in poetic prose as she so often did, and her mind whispered,

I wish to slice an incision down the center of my body

Arms and legs strapped to a gurney

Pretty blonde hair splayed about me.

I want to watch the blood drip down my sides

revealing the layers of flesh and muscle.

I desire to reach my ribs. To see before my own eyes

the beating of my own heart.

I want to watch the white, black, gray silvery ribbon and spiral

emerge from within my chest. I want to watch it release it self.

I want to set it free into the world, and let them sit with it.

She thought this all as she let her head drop back against the glass, now warmed by her own heat. She felt her hands clutching the words of Franklin, an attempt to elicit meaning through touch alone. The chattering students had quieted. Her headache soothed by her own rhythmic day dreams.

The red yellow white lights of the station came into view, her large gray eyes stared up at the concrete giant looming before her. The bus stopped. She gathered her book, her bag, her wallet; thoughts eased by the simple act of going home. She thanked the driver as she stepped down the stairs into the february rain. Hair tucked serenely into her coat. Gray eyes staring, preparing for the routine that lay ahead. Her mind whispering, you are almost there.