My heart is in my throat
my heart is in my throat
I can break this down to its parts: that I am feeling my pulse stronger, that my muscles are tensing I can know that my heart is not actually in my throat
but when I saw the news today, I remembered that you don’t live that far from there, that you
live so close to something horrific, but you reminded me often enough that no matter where you went you were living close to something horrific, that life for you was always just this side of something awful happening that everywhere here can be unsafe and I didn’t know if here meant this country or this world or maybe the universe itself
And on the news, I couldn’t bear to watch it and I couldn’t bear to not watch it and I couldn’t bear that these were my choices and my pulse is beating in my veins and you are in my head, always, some memory of you and my heart is pounding until my breath hurts to be taken You said once that you loved the world best before you knew it at all
And when I try to sleep I count my heart beats instead of sheep and each breath I take is like a weight on my chest and I am saying please to the universe over and over though neither of us ever believed in that sort of thing and still always when I think of you
my heart is in my throat
—
Chloe N. Clark’s work appears in such places as Bombay Gin, Drunken Boat, Flash Fiction Online, Hobart, Midwestern Gothic, and more. She writes for Nerds of a Feather and Ploughshares. In addition she teaches college comp and tweets @PintsNCupcakes.