A Heart That Works

by Rob Delaney

Or, more likely, that the gas-bloated zombie-corpse of a murdered postman had slipped a rusty handcuff around my ankle and was going to yank me down and make me be his wife for eternity.

I suppose I thought dying in the ocean was just the cost of doing business, whereas dying in a lake meant you could only have been murdered by someone or something that derived erotic pleasure from your gurgled screams.

I wasn’t afraid for her; the bloated postman only wanted me. ’Twas only for me that the slimy vines ran drills, coiling around driftwood and otters, preparing for the day I mustered the courage to enter their murky lair.

You only coast downhill . . .

After he died, I had the odd sensation of somehow being older than my parents, or at the very least having seen something that they hadn’t, and it had changed me. I felt like no one, even my parents, who raised me, had anything to offer me that could light my path and show me a way forward. It didn’t feel like I could lean on anyone in a way that would truly,

substantively help me. That was a very sad and lonely feeling, and while it wasn’t a correct assessment of my place in the world, it is what it felt like.

Rather, I suspect I am a glass of water, and when I die, the contents of my glass will be poured into the same vast ocean that Henry’s glass was poured into, and we will mingle together forever. We won’t know who’s who. And you’ll get poured in there one day, too.