The Heart is Not a Size

From the middle of the book that I am, in this heat, in this fury, writing:

Later that night I woke up sweating from a dream, those black wings inside my ribcage beating, my mother’s words, Apply your intelligence to every living thing, snaking through my blood. I fought with the dark to free myself from my bed, struggled to wrest the weight from my chest. It was after two, and the house was quiet, and I headed for the stairs, my right fist against my heart to quiet the fury, to survive it. I needed the night beyond, which finally I reached, stumbling out onto the porch and into the streets and heading for the fairgrounds, which were empty now, the horses long since talked back into their trailers and driven off, Riley’s stories floating somewhere in the caverns of their heads. I hadn’t had a panic attack in two months. Each one was bigger than the last.

We find the heart only by dismantling what/the heart knows. (“Tear it Down,” Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires). The words are from a poem Jack Gilbert wrote and Mr. Buzzby read toward the end of my sophomore year, when I finally stopped minding the class so much and settled in to learn. I walked the streets last night with that line in my head—walked until I could breathe again and stand up straight without collapsing. I was going to Juarez because I needed some perspective, some place where I could let the big bird free. My head knew things that my heart didn’t yet. I was privileged. I was smart. I had a future. Now was the time to believe in myself.