Don't Suffer More,

Suffer better. Beat a surfer if you see one. Seat a burping baby, and she will stop. These are things I've learned since being away from snow. The thing is it's no less cold, my heart no less tiny and starlike in the center of my body. It is disturbing. My doctor thought it would expand when the average temperature went above 45 degrees Fahrenheit. But no. It just beats slow, Willard. The doctor held the mechanism up to it and we both could see it on the screen. You know I hate doctors, hate their manners and adopted mannerisms designed to make you comfortable, make you less likely to resist the many ways they penetrate your sanctum. But we could see it on the screen. The heart. A blip. Another blip. Then another. And soon my inside was out onscreen like a baby. I don't know what it was called. The mechanism, the baby, the surfer.

I looked it up. I checked some sources. I was suffering then. But not suffering well. Suffering better, beater? Neither. We are apart. It is a suffering. It is a lovely suffering. If we were together we could weather anything but nothing would be produced. When two magnets nestle back to back there is no energy between them. When they are pulled apart you can see the squiggly little lines like in physics textbooks that can make electricity move. We need those lines. Sometimes I feel that's all that keeps this microscopic heart alive.