And in winter, she says, if you’re quiet you can hear a heartbeat…and I am and I do, but it’s so faint. Like a baby mouse fighting to be born. Or a leaf trying to go back in time to when it hadn’t already fallen. And I lean in closer and I pull it all to me but still it’s almost like silence. Like snow falling on a mound of itself. Like all the stars of the universe as seen from a crag in the farthest parts of the world. That’s it, I think. That’s it. It’s so hard to hear because it’s so far away. How can the parts inside us be outside our grasp - they’re right there. They’re right there. They’re right there. The blood flowing back and forth. The organs churning. A perfect little engine but I don’t always feel like I’m driving. And I lean in again and I hear the purr, smell the oil slick, bask in the exhaust. And wonder: what kind of road trip am I on, anyway? And where do I get off?

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