Speak From the Heart

We’re taught to think that the heart is the strongest  muscle,
as it nearly never fails to pump for most of life’s
hoped long span. In fact the strongest muscle is the tongue,
yet its failure will rarely kill as surely as the heart’s.
A random checkup caught a leaky valve not squeezing
blood completely through and away within the chambers
of my elder son’s young heart. He’ll be alright, we were told,
It’s nothing, were the words said, speaking platitudes
for life and death that angered, yet all the while we hoped
for the bitingly ironic truth: that the tongue actually is
stronger than the heart, that platitudes can speak health
into reality, that he will be alright, and that a slowly leaking heart
really is nothing at all.

Tracy Plath