The only time I notice a minor side effect of my heart is when I’m sitting on my toilet, locked in my bathroom, which is attached to my office, adjacent to Senator Field’s office, on the fifth floor of the capitol building, which is capped with a gold dome and set within a wide lush lawn. Her bathroom and mine share lead pipes, fixtures of a certain age and temperament, wood doors that swell in the summer, and a thin wall which permits an auditory intimacy never acknowledged between us.
As I engage in the business of law making, through emails, hearings, debates, and votes, I sip and sip from a bottle containing ice water, a thin slice of lemon, and a sprig of fresh mint from the planter on my patio. I avoid any petty reprieves as well as the public restrooms. I practice my Kegel exercises while networking with peers.
When I am nearly doubled over with the effort of containment, when I must cross my legs as gracefully as heels and stress and situation allow, I beg off and make excuses – important call with the Governor, you know – and dash to my porcelain throne, fumble with my zipper, tear down my drawers. Then, and only then, do I exult in wild release, the sweet surrender born of anticipation and desperate need, the only primitive ecstasy allowed within our pinstriped confines, eyes closed, ears drowned with the deafening waterfall of which I am the source.
I am the melting snows of the Himalayas. I am the monsoon. I am the flood.
While sacrificing the waters of the world, the only solitary moment in my day, I meditate, recalling that this same liquid recycles endlessly through time within this closed circuit we call Earth – through triceratops and saber-tooth tigers, through oceans and clouds, through sparrows and homo sapiens.
Then, as the waters ebb and I return to myself, I see it. First, it is just a blurred vibration in my peripheral vision. Then I adjust my eyes, recalibrate my depth of vision, and focus upon this object which springs from me. A lock of hair has escaped my coiffure, fallen forward over my left eye, and trembles to the tempo in my temple, a faint echo from the unbound pump in my chest, its perpetual waves flowing through the rivers of my celestial body, rippling through ever more distant tributaries.
It is only then, when I sit without distraction, when I sit without movement, upon my throne, that I see that small side effect of my heart.
Julie Jones is a fiction writer residing in Connecticut. She works full time as a law librarian and is writing her first mystery novel.
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