Pump ~ A #Hearteater Podcast

This following is a piece written expressly to be listened to.  The story is included so as to allow you to read along if you wish, but do take the time to listen to the piece.

Pump – click to listen, right click to save.

In truth this thing beating in my chest is a simple pump. An organ of specialized muscle to push fluid through my arteries; a construction of chambers and valves to accept depleted blood and thrust it back through my body. My thoughts don’t control it; my heartbeat resonates through my chest regardless of my awareness, beating through the night, through the day. And yet, somehow, she’s managed to make it more.

I once gave no credence to the things people said about their hearts; it’s just physiology, simple science.  How can a heart be given, received, broken, healed or eaten?  It’s just a muscle, like any other in our bodies.  Love has nothing to do with the heart and everything to do with the chemicals in our brains that tie pain and pleasure to synapses and fire them off at will at another’s presence.

Until I met her.

We sparked like the most volatile of combinations, unstable elements meeting in an uncontrolled setting.  Eyes met and held, flared and burned with emotion.  Was it love?  No.  Not then.  Then it was equal parts irritation, challenge and attraction.  Whenever our paths crossed my world descended into a tailspin.  My body reacted, flushing my cheeks, my heart delivered deep beats in response to her nearness.  My eyes dilated, lips parted; other areas of my flesh grew ripe with blood.

I told myself it was a simple physical reaction to her; the natural stimulation of pheromones.  Every time I saw her I talked myself through it, scientific explanations of bodily exhibitions of arousal and desire.  I understood desire, could bear the weight of it on my mind, the fullness it brought to my body.  I fought it, naturally.  Every rational mind does, right?

Until that one night when we met in the shadows cast by the moon.  The summer evening’s heavy air wrapped around us, pulling us together.  If I were prone to flights of fancy I would say her draw was gravitational.  Our lips met, the first approach soft as moth’s wings, the second with the full force of a flash flood.  Desire I understood but my insatiable craving to taste her sent my mind spinning.  Her matter-of-fact addressing of our condition soothed my scattered thoughts.  ”I’m just down here a bit, come home with me.”

And I did.

Now, her smile makes my heart jump, her voice controls its pace. I can feel her with each contraction; the squeeze of that fist-sized muscle timed to my desire’s pulse; her pulse.  And when her steps bring her near, lithe body dancing into my reach, suddenly I understand what they mean, for surely my heart isn’t beating in my chest but hers.  I don’t remember the giving or receiving of it, don’t recall and stealthy retrieval or consumption, but I do know this.  My heart, my faithful pump, muscle that drives my body’s lifeforce, is hers.