![\"From](\"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/From-the-Heart-297x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Speak From the Heart<\/p>\n
We’re taught to think that the heart\u00a0is the strongest\u00a0 muscle, Tracy Plath<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Speak From the Heart We’re taught to think that the heart\u00a0is the strongest\u00a0 muscle, as it\u00a0nearly never\u00a0fails to pump for most\u00a0of life’s hoped\u00a0long span.\u00a0In fact the strongest muscle is the tongue, yet its failure\u00a0will rarely kill as surely\u00a0as the heart’s. A random checkup caught\u00a0a leaky\u00a0valve\u00a0not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25976"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29663,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25976\/revisions\/29663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nas it\u00a0nearly never\u00a0fails to pump for most\u00a0of life’s
\nhoped\u00a0long span.\u00a0In fact the strongest muscle is the tongue,
\nyet its failure\u00a0will rarely kill as surely\u00a0as the heart’s.
\nA random checkup caught\u00a0a leaky\u00a0valve\u00a0not squeezing
\nblood completely through and away within the chambers
\nof my elder son’s young heart.\u00a0He’ll be alright<\/em>,\u00a0we were told,
\nIt’s nothing<\/em>,\u00a0were the words said,\u00a0speaking platitudes
\nfor life and death that angered, yet all the while\u00a0we hoped
\nfor the bitingly ironic truth:\u00a0that the tongue\u00a0actually is<\/span>
\nstronger than the heart,\u00a0that platitudes can speak\u00a0health
\ninto reality, that he will be alright, and that a slowly\u00a0leaking\u00a0heart
\nreally is nothing at all.<\/p>\n