Breanna Emmett

Countdown

Breanna Emmett

What is the metric to measure the progress of a healing heart?

Is there something that can tell you when it is safe to be you again, something to gauge the distance between you and the next resurrection?

Slip a stick past your blue lips, under your stiff tongue, let it soak in the ash and iron dusting the flesh of your gums. Wait for it to analyze

every frozen and forgotten cell in your bloodstream, to taste the carrion within, and spit out a date in return: Five days. Ten days. A month.

A year. However far away the day may be, mark it down on a calendar pinned to the wall across from your bed so you may shine a spotlight onto it. Stare

as X’s appear under the drag of the pen, and wait for your heart to beat again.