Sonogram

I take it with me
to show Steve
the place where my valve doesn’t close all the way
and how, here, it pulls microscopically inward
and lets blood leak out
a little at a time.
And there at the bottom
the crisp black smudge
where oxygen doesn’t flow anymore.

And when the letter comes,
we read it together
looking up words-
ejection fraction, bradycardia-
on WebMD.com.

It tells me I can still use mine,
but it won’t work as well as other hearts.

Especially Steve’s
as I press my head against his ribs,
his heartbeat pounds like fast-walk footsteps
his chest is thick with sound.
I press my lips to all his pulses.

He tells me he loves me.

I touch my fingers to my chest
to feel the slow,
too slow,
squeeze of my heart.

I smile, but I know
I will never catch up.

- Aubrey Hirsch

Las Vegas

They thought they’d make a day of it
strolling through the casinos,
pulling nickel slots,
eating baguettes and fruit plates
on the pool level of the Paris hotel
where we are staying.

I walk down with them to the gaming floor
because I am freshly twenty-one
and feeling lucky.

I watch them for a little while
saddened at the way my dad in his wheelchair
can’t see over the craps table.

And how awkward his head looks
tilted back and around
every time he tries to hear what my mother is saying.
And the way she has to say everything twice.
Once facing forward,
her voice straining over the sound of dropping quarters,
and then again leaning over him,
like a child in a stroller.

I watch the chair bump against the slot machines
while she tries to find the right angle,
a spot between stools,
and my dad tells her not to worry about it.
He’d rather watch.
He doesn’t think he’s very lucky.

And it stops looking like a date
and more like a field trip.
My mother has her hands full trying to accommodate
and entertain,
David, can you reach the lever?
He weakly puts his arm out
and I look away
because I want there to be someone who does not know.

- Aubrey Hirsch

She Looked Like a Fountain

I can’t remember the first time she had them with her
when she flew in to visit me from New Orleans.
But somewhere in that space beyond the airport
hard packs of Marlboros started appearing in her purse.
They are reds to match her nail polish and the lipstick
she is always leaving behind on the filters.

But I can tell you about the first time we smoked
a stolen Camel Light from the top of Lexi’s fridge.
Squatting barefoot in the creek behind my parents’ house
I am balanced in a way that separates her eleven from my thirteen.
But she is the first one to exhale without coughing.
She pushes her lips out like blowing bubbles, or candles.
But this is a secret kind of smoke.

- Aubrey Hirsch