two billion beats

When I was a child, a woman once told me that the human heart is capable of mustering approximately two billion beats before it dies. Before it expires.

On my twelfth Halloween, I tried to calculate my own expiration date. I waited until all was quiet and dark in the house and pressed a thumb to my wrist, counting the beats for a minute. After saying my BPM aloud to myself, I turned to look at the family calculator and burst into tears.

I am still much too afraid to do what I attempted at 12. I will never cease to be afraid.

Every time my mother embraces me--every time I hear her heartbeat through her grey cotton sweater, I am afraid.

Every time my sister's breath comes in a puff of wintertime fog, I am afraid.

Every time I love someone who will die, I am afraid.