Joanne Esser

The morning when I unstick my heart monitor from the skin of my chest, its adhesive itchy and gummed after wearing the patch for the last two weeks, I press it into its box to be mailed back and wait for the lab to analyze my rhythm. I wonder what the data will reveal, its ups and downs charted on some kind of graph the cardiologist can read, a record of fourteen days and nights of slow and fast beats that until now only I could read, from the inside. It was on this same morning that I watched a neon green beetle climb across the surface of a grey boulder at the lakeshore. Again and again its six hairlike legs stepped forward over crevices and cracks, its long dark antennae reading like a map the subtle currents of air passing through. It stumbled, more than once, and when I placed my fingertip in its path, it turned and, without missing a beat, kept on its way in a new direction. Regardless. Just carried on. It never arrived anywhere, all the time I sat still and watched. It kept marching along, leg after leg after leg after leg after leg after leg.

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