and I pocket the little rays in my gurney
while they perform sonic echoes of my heart
and the lines rise and fall and rise and fall.

There’s abnormalities banging around in my chest;
raccoons in the wall, feverously knocking, then
pausing, waiting for me to catch another breath.

But my partner sings through tears, her hazel eyes
a constant throughout these tumultuous times spent
monopolizing my care from hospital to hospital around

the Greater Boston area. If Uber rides could talk
they would erupt with chimes of laughter
through failed insulin pods, windmilling, blurring together

like the irregularities the cardiologists just can’t pin down.
But my partner takes my hands and draws circles in my palm;
circle after circle after circle; my partner and I in a dance,

tranced, a constant looping in an open field in rural Georgia,
against the amber sky. When these constant visits
become yearly, I take the smile she offers, and memorize the lines