A Heart Beating Hard

Abstract

Margie started as a suggestion. A frustration. A night out. A drink. A lot of drinks. A thin-lipped smile and some small talk about the Sox. A beer-cold hand on the inside of a soft warm thigh. A laugh, a nod. A locked bathroom stall and a skirt hiked up high. A hand pulling hair. A space, filled. A need. A cry. A release. A disappointment.Margie started there in that small empty place and there single-celled Margie started to divide and divide and divide. Unseen, unknown Margie, what was Margie before she was Margie, burrowed and billowed and became. Swimming in the warm dark waters where we all live before we live, growing skin to contain, lungs to breathe, a heart to beat.Margie, started, sprouting legs to kick and eyes to see and a mouth to speak. Margie, at the start, small and secret and shaping into the shape we all take. Growing and pushing inside that space that becomes smaller and smaller with every new bone and ear and eyelash. Turning and floating and kicking inside all of that inside fluid. Fish-like, flapping, fat forming, warming. Filling with the blood that would be her blood, building the brain that would be her brain, finding the lines of the body that would be her body.Margie, started inside, hiding. Margie, from the start, her body made secret. Margie, from the start, the same. Margie, from the start, different from the rest of us. Margie, starting, eyes opening, light let in, waiting for what would come. MARJORIETomorrow is coming. Or here, almost. Tomorrow is almost today and still Marjorie is not sure if she should call Steve at the Store and say that today she will take her vacation day. Marjorie, in her soft purple pajamas, sits sunk down into the deep shape of Ma left behind in this bed. Marjorie, in Ma's bed, sits still as she can in the quiet, quiet bedroom, in the weak blue light at the beginning of morning. Shoulders down low, the hard of the headboard making pains in her back. Marjorie sits, has been sitting for a long time, listens to Gram roll and snore and sigh in the next room. Looks at the dark turned-off shape of the no-sound television. Listens to her self, her wind, to her own breath breathing the last of Ma in and out. Marjorie sits and smells the smell of Ma, the late-night secret cigarettes, the sleeping her loud sleep behind the shut door across the hall. Him gone, left, taken away. Ma done, gone, given up. Ma's room, free, left behind and Marjorie the only one still here to sleep in the wide high soft of this bed. Ma's bed.And Lucy. Almost here Lucy. Gone, gone, the big long gone of Lucy. No. Marjorie is not thinking about Lucy. Marjorie is tired. Marjorie is sitting, still sitting, just sitting, not sleeping, not thinking, is here now in her self, in her new place. A headboard. This too-soft bed with a long wooden part and for what? A hard place for putting her head. Marjorie breathes her breath, follows her wind out of her mind, away from the departments where she does not want to go, far from the aisles of things she does not want to think about.Marjorie, doing what ...