When My Heart Forgot the Dance

 Rachael Ikins

 Rachael Ikins the day after the ablation

By Rachael Ikins

These poems tell the story of my heart arrhythmia and procedure May 2018. It was many years before I understood this is a thing you live with like your eye color. In 2015 I was defibrillated at the Emergency Room of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse NY.

 The ablation for afib happened at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. I went home that early evening. A friend stayed with me for a week because I wasn’t allowed to lift or exert myself. The cardiologist who did the ablation told me a lot of the erroneous activity was coming from the nerves in the stump/scar of the part of my lung my husband operated on so long ago. Felt like Phillip was talking to me.

The last poem about the voice was written one of the times post ablation when I wore a monitor for a month. They look like smart phones. But the leads come unstuck sometimes and the red light comes on so I ended up phoning the 800 number in a panic. The lovely man on the other end had a voice like melted chocolate and talked me through redoing the leads while I stood in the bathroom mirror telling him what I saw. I decided they must hire people with those voices on purpose. Sure calmed me down.

I’ve just now started to feel a degree of knowing what to do when it bothers me rather than panic.

 Boundary Violation was previously published in an anthology by IndieBlu press.


When My Heart Forgot the Dance

Always happened autumns—
when my heart forgot the dance. light shortened, 
darkness chilled pavements, speed up, 
two step, cha cha, break dancing

red phone in my pocket,
ambulance, ER,
alien spaceship’s inner dome.  I remember 
the EMT’s kindness, my panic attacking me, 
how she said to blow through my mouth 2, 3, 4, 
5, 6, 7, 8,
suck in, nostrils only.

In a cargo bay, 
hooked me to leads, at one 
with the Mothership, did bleeds 
they left me. 

To study the dirt on the baseboards 
where the wringer mops flipped their hair. I had to pee. 

Two years later, October, 
after a beer and a bowl of chili, 
a ride to Urgent Care even though last time
 I remembered they said: heart = ER.
I was too busy breathing to argue. 

EMT injected me, something warm
 that told my heart to stop fucking around. 
When we got there, a-fib. They could 
turn me off, shock me on again.

I came to chattering. Lost an earring. 
Before zap, all metal must be removed, 
collected in a plastic bag. I wanted to get back 
to myself, but that earring never found its way.

After years of donut holes, 
drugs that didn’t work. 
Spring, ablation. 

Information minimal about just how asleep 
you are or not during this procedure with wires
 snaked up your hoo hoo and a floating level of consciousness
 that thinks “How obnoxious!” that jack- hammering 
in your chest. I said it aloud.

Home late afternoon, subcu Loop recording my every beat 
and tattling wifi.

Years passed. There is still a-fib now and then, not much, 
and phantom sensations left from the jackhammering 
“They may never go away”
Beat, beat, squeak

Loop’s battery dying. I can opt to have them dig it out. No,
say, leave it with my tats and scars, all friends by now.

Last night we fell back an hour, 
nights leave frost-lathered dawn lawns. 
I realize, beat beat, it’s the time of year when shit happens
 and me without my Loop. Who knew I would miss that tattletale?
On news they say daylight saving fallback stress 
causes more heart attacks and strokes. 

I wake up 2:10 a.m. right after the time changes,
Doo be doo be shaboom, 

have faith little girl
Your heart is strong.


Boundary Violation/Heart Surgery

I entered the machine.
On my own soft feet.
Murders of black robots like crows 
rustled and hummed, 
exhaled frigid breath. 
They stripped me,
taped me, needled and sprayed me.

And I laid my body down
in this glass room. They kept me awake. Bitter herbs.
A white rabbit larger than a man
grinned vampire teeth,
hammer in one paw to pound my heart.

There were balloons, liquid nitrogen,
a suggestion of microwaves and my secrets 
exposed on a 52” screen as snakes slithered 
through my skin into pathways only my blood 
should whisper.

They told me to breathe.

The next few nights I did not sleep.
Fearing the rabbit.

Where they planted a monitor in my skin, 
glued next to my cat tattoo, 
bruising spread, my left breast a purple Picasso 
masterpiece.
I did not sleep.

The monitor tattles my secrets all night after midnight.

The third day exhaustion took me. I slept hard, 
unaware when I woke of the day or time. I followed 
my mother into a field. She disappeared down a woodchuck hole.
When I called, she popped out, a large lynx 
with Mom’s three-years’-past-dying eyes, juicy 
bird in her mouth. 

“Eat, baby.”  she said. I was hungry.

Last night while the monitor recorded my regular rhythm
I camouflaged myself well with dusk, 

I arrived on Cape Cod. My husband and I argued and then 
I was running, running to the ocean, water to my waist. 
I embraced a mossy cliff. 
Salt-tinged rivulets flowed down my sore throat.
I need. I need. I need.

When I climb to the beach, fog obscures the world. 
No way back to him, our motel, or not to fall off a cliff. 
I slide one bare foot at a time along pavement, sand grinds skin.
My feet must be bleeding. It stings. 

A cottage looms. Woman bows her head over artwork 
she crafts by lantern light. I stand unseen, back to the shingles.
I shiver, fingers spread, full of splinters and peeled paint, to wait

for the sun to burn the fog away. 
To find my way.
Heart-percussion syncopates/ocean’s song. 
Beneath a May moon.
I pray
for peace.


My Heart is a Lonely God, Tearing My Guts

The voice of my heart growls like a stomach.
 bustles along tunnels in darkness thinks only 
of its next meal, rodent whiskers twitch over 
large black eyes. You prod and probe. The snail 
suspects a spy, curls in on itself, curses the magic wand 
depending on your hand’s angle.

The curve where the path branches 
off is a rush hour river. We raft in the arms
of all the layered voices that limped and skipped 
down these banks before us. A chorus.
This room, the white leaved tree of lights holds 
all their melodies, two notes, sometimes three, 
voices that say, Hey/mom and why/why/why. 

Heart is Gollum hoarding its ring,
does not appreciate your spying, 
taking notes for future to use 
against it.

 

Calling the 800 # Tech at 2 a.m. When My Heart Monitor Blinked Red

His voice is a hole in the box spring 
A haven I crawl into.

His voice is wrap-around sunglasses
smoky and cool, when I wear them 
nobody sees me.

Back here by the baseboard 
of betrayal, 
I carve two words into my skin, 
“No more.”

His voice holds my heart 
this heaving small animal,  in one palm, 
strokes with a single finger until I sigh. 
The dark fills with stars. My heart
whispers his name, melted velvet
I lick my lips

Zion. Zi-on. Zi-on