OPen Heart surgery

Three to six hours.  

Three to six hours is the average time open heart surgery takes.  

Yet my chest has been open for days. 

I lay on the operating table unable to help myself as I feel the cold air touch my beating heart.  

My blood seeps out of me and runs along my chest,    
I look at what they’re doing to me, I feel sick.  

It's as if they don’t realize- 

I know.  

 

My chest feels empty. 

I feel like I’ve forgotten how to breathe and when I think about it too much I’m sure I’ll puke.  

There’s too much space between my heart and the world now.  

All open and exposed. 

 

I reach to try and cover myself, but I can’t. 

Deep down inside I know if I move to cover myself I could develop an infection.  

Each time I flinch the skin on my chest tears stretching the hole wider.   

I don’t think I can stay here much longer.  

I am cold and afraid. 

 

It hurts.  

But not in a way that feels like I have just been cut open. 

In fact that was my favorite part. 

Now it is an ache.  

A pain that eats away at me from my throat to my stomach.  

It consumes me so much that it becomes all I know,  

all I feel.  

 

I wish I could go back to when I didn’t notice. 

Back to when I didn’t know you were slowly cutting me open. 

Preparing to expose me to the outside world. 

 

For so long it felt like I had an extra layer of protection.   

Your body settled between my heart and the world. 

But what I didn’t realize then 

is that you slowly tore me open.