Arrhythmia

He shouldn’t, but he does. He runs up hills,
thinking about her inaccessibility,
her vanishings, her panics, and her pills,
her ever-constant instability.
He stops at Dyson’s summit, staring out,
over the edge, at the alien world below,
knowing there’s just one thing he cares about:
Where is she now? And why did she go?
He feels the syncopation of his heart,
its whirling tachycardia, its death-
like SVTs, its sudden off-the-chart
fibrillation, and his paucity of breath.
He weakens in a wild, dizzying blur,
which feels just fine, because it feels like her.

– William Baer

First published in “Bocage” and Other Sonnets, Texas Review Press, 2008. Reproduced with permission from the poet.

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