Chambers

Words by Sonal Kamble

1.

underneath footbridge. It rained an obscene amount last night. Turned the path into islands. I almost step on the tiny of my policy lecture. The heart hops. Flips over. Water lines tessellate around its veins. There is gravel studded along the arteries, crushed twigs, and a serrated Snickers wrapper corner glued to the side. It looks messy, a little shy. Reminds me of myself after a night out. I dunk it into the pocket of my hoodie and take it home.

I don’t realise it then — the way it moves. But I will.

2.

The heart sleeps in a tank under my bed. It used to belong to my girlfriend’s toad, but I relocated Toadette into a shoebox under my house. I draw the tank out ribbons in the frosted glass, and start rubbing circles into the pocket near the atrium. It’s so raw, so bleached of colour. Frozen in a perpetual blush. “Cute,” I say. I pull away from the muscle. Then it happens all at once.

The smell of fresh iron streams up my nose. The heart pinches into a plum-sized thing, then swells, then rolls through the motions again. And again. It beats. Squelches out a plasmic river. Red coats everything.

“What the fuck.”

It stops.

3. Tuna holds my hand as we walk against the molten 5 PM commuter mass. It’s dark outside. The rain slants with faces. “Piece of shit!” Tuna yells. Every stoplight wants us to drown. She tucks me deeper under her twig-boned umbrella, and the backs of her hands catch all the rain.

“Um.” We walk to the brick stares at my nailbeds. “Are you Crusted into my cuticles and wedged beneath my press-ons, is blood. Fuck.

We’d been getting to know each other that afternoon. I had my buzzcut carpet, and started reading out the Wattpad novel I had written seven years ago. The heart is a bit conservative. It was static the whole time.

The heart shrunk, caught in an blood and plasma slurped back

“I’m sorry. Taylor Swift.”

“Handwritten letters. Pining. Prejudice.” was a moment, barely real, where I felt it beat in time with mine.

“Do you want—” Tuna clamps her chin down on the spine of wipes out of her bag. Chin multiplying with every second she strains against the open canopy; she starts cleaning my

“Geez, Tuna!” My heart starts beating in my ears. Something stutters in my chest. A second sound. “Stop being dumb!”

4. Blatella Germanica — the roach’s courtship.

Tuna told me about the way they copulate. It’s a saccharine mating ritual. Watching them on piss-slicked concrete, it’s traumatic. The male unfurls, tucked into his wing. He’s charming. Juicing himself of maltose and maltotriose for a The concrete is so dark. They look slimy in the night.

The cockroach curls over the dampened harmony. Every slant of lamplight resurrects them — now turned boneless.

Mars wrappers in the next.

The thudding in my chest turns slippery. It moves like it’s discovering spaces between my ribs and lungs. Ninety minutes.

Tuna said they go for ninety minutes. My heart beats too fast. It swells unlike itself.

5.

It’s Valentine’s Day, Tuna is torn from my neighbour’s garden are being wound up into a purple ribbon.

There must be love behind my computer screen, somewhere beyond the sliced body of the monitor, because the heart is beating relentlessly. Or it must the romance of it all.

When Tuna comes in, she presses a jar full of paper into my chest. “Some reasons why I love you,” she says, but the jar spans the entire length of my torso.

“They were a lot more upright when I found them,” I say.

Tuna holds the tank up.

“Um.”

The heart wilts behind the glass, shrivelling until its wrinkles look like fault lines buried deep into

“She’s just — away.”

“In the…. crawl space.”

Tuna’s expression is unnervingly

“…Yeah.”

She’s swift out the door, leaving the weedy bouquet scattered by the doorway. Grabbing the tank, I try to yell after her, but the sound is garbage. Syllables pulped with bursts into tears.

Toadette was so slimy, so vapid. It’s not a big deal. But Tuna cries into the cardboard like she’s emptying out her viscera.

“It was just a toad,” I say. Then it happens all at once.

My chest caves like it’s gripping partition between my trachea and oesophagus dissolves. My airways squeal shut. I try to gag out a breath, but it’s seized by a throb. My chest is too full. My pulse is layered. A twin beat punching my ribcage.

She laughs, a pretty sound, and

I look behind me. The tank is empty.