June 03, 2004
Heartbreak Soup
I dreamt I was an organ courier, with a second heart living in my chest beside my own. I was keeping it safe and warm, keeping it alive. I met the family of its recipient, and they thanked me again and again for my trouble; their gratitude was almost unbearable.I wasn't conscious for the surgery, but all the same I remember being cut open, I remember that other heart being torn out. I remember being curled up in despair afterwards, clutching the sides of my chest closed around too much space, just raw flesh and emptiness. Wrapping myself tightly around a pillow, crying and convulsing and vomiting up a thin trickle of yellow bile.
And then, still in the dream, I woke up, sort of, and I realized that this hadn't happened after all, even as I burned from the hollowness inside, even as I wept and shook. I considered, in the dream, blogging about my nightmare, but I knew that I couldn't because it wasn't mine.
It took me a little while to remember that the whole heart transplant storyline had happened in an episode of Friends, not a nightmare, but a light-hearted romp. Whoever it was had been more of a heart babysitter than a courier, and it was all some gentle misunderstanding, amusingly resolved. If I told people about my dream they'd laugh, knowing that I'd plagiarized it. Knowing that I couldn't be original even in my dreams.
By the time I really woke up, it didn't seem so bad after all. I was no longer gutted -- though I could clearly remember how that felt -- just a bit sheepish about being so easily affected by dumb plots from sappy sitcoms.
Posted by matt at June 3, 2004 08:36 PM
And it was true;
It flew from me
And went to you.
So treat it well,
As I have done,
For you have two
And I have none. And I actually stole the idea for a sonnet I wrote for an Italian class in college. I'd post that but there was a grammatical error in the Italian, so until I fix it it will not see the light of day. Posted by: Faustus, M.D. at June 4, 2004 12:36 AM
