Sinus bradycardia

What the heart knows

Photo by Maxim Berg on Unsplash

Not much of a preamble to this poem, except a little explanation of the title. We have congenital heart issues in the family and I’ve with lived palpitations and a slow heart beat since I was a teenager. My resting heart rate is about 41 pbm. I also have a high stroke volume like my dad, which I used to think I could ‘feel’ as a strong pounding in my chest, until I realised that’s just plain old anxiety. Maybe it’s been part of my strength narrative, seeing myself as someone with a durable if a bit fickle heart which will simply keep on beating through adversity – a story that hasn’t always served me well in terms of recognising my own needs.

I’ve learnt a lot in recent weeks about embodied trauma, the somatic miscellania it can present as and ways to soothe and regulate my body without ignoring what it’s trying to tell me.

I’ve also learnt to ask and accept help from my loved ones, because no heart is an island. Hard one, that, when you’re proud and mulish and permanently a somewhat irritable with the world and everyone in it. But love is strong medicine, as they say.

Sinus bradycardia

I have my father’s heart

ventricles that churn hard and slow

(when on time)

a swan’s wing enduring the weathered mosaic

of field and water, the conifer expanse

beating to atmosphere’s exhale

Migration pattern in my blood

Again I took to the familiar skies

but on this tour round the sun

I found the wetlands drained

no fish, just lonely mud

grounded in a strange rhythm

Yet I was a lucky bird: swans mate for life

he heard my heartbreak song

there was sanctuary, a feathered rest

a way back for the wayward

my long neck tucked in the softness

a stethoscope impulse, remembering

I am

I am

I am