"Your heart is not pumping like it should," the cardiologist said. "You're in heart failure. It's amazing that you're running at all." He said her ejection fraction was at 20%, meaning 80% of her blood stayed in the heart's ventricle instead of pumping through her body. "Do you want me to start running less?" she [...]
too long miles later & I have sputtered like this engine needing, I bet, to tug the cables.
For the first time in four years my ICD "delivered therapy," which I discovered days after "the event" when my electrophysiologist's nurse called to ask "if I was okay."
What you do know is that what the women said about you is true: you are a cavernous hollow in whom no man can find his rightful end. And who doesn’t want to end somehow? To plant a flag, surrender and wilt into rest?
For today’s sermon, we borrow from the book of Nikki (Giovanni, that is).
Editor’s Note: While our usual editorial style uses poets’ last names on second reference, this essay intentionally breaks with that style as a nod to the intimacy the poet has cultivated with audiences and readers.
By Kendra N. Bryant, PhD
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
—Nikki Giovanni, “Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why)”
Jesus wept. (John 11:35)
I find Jesus and Nikki to be quite similar, maybe even one and the same. Admittedly, however, I don’t know either that well. But I think I know enuf about them to make such an assertion. See, I’m thinking if Jesus really is on Mars,[1] then Nikki’s fascination with space is really her fascination with herself, but not in an ego-tripping, self-centered fashion; more like a return to Self. Otherwise…
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It wasn't remembering at all but realizing--probably that's what I was doing, you know, that you are dead, and it felt like chewing foil
Source: darlene anita scott
I am living with advanced heart failure. Yeah, yeah, yeah some of you are like "but I thought you were healing;" well, a test the other week shows regression. An additional and more extensive scan the week after next will refute or confirm. Whether advanced or (hopefully) not I live with heart failure. And my [...]
Back in 2012, I wrote a Dear John letter to the brothers. My relationships with the Johns in my life were (and will always be I suppose) evolving, transitioning, ending. I'm a stubborn one, but my ideas and opinions evolve, transition, end too. So it is with the Dear John letter. I realized the change [...]
