Since the surgery,
my heart has found a new language.

Not louder,
only stranger.

A small, composite witness
keeping time beneath my ribs,
a quiet click
that arrived with mercy,
though it sounded at first
like interruption.

In those early days
I heard it everywhere.
In silence.
In prayer.
Between one breath
and the next.

I wondered
if I would ever forget it.

Now,
it waits for me at night.

When I lay my body down,
when the day’s noise
folds itself away,
there it is again.

click…
click…
click…

faithful as a monk’s prayer bell,
calling me
to remember
that I have been kept alive.

Has it disappeared?

No.

Only surrendered
to the ordinary,
where miracles so often hide.

And I wonder
if this is the greater danger.

Not that the heart
would cease its song,
but that I would cease
to hear it.

Lord Jesus,

may it never be so with You.

Do not let Your presence
become so familiar
that I mistake it
for absence.

If I no longer notice,
wake me.

If Your grace has become
the background music
of my days,
teach me again
to listen.

Let every hidden beat,
every unnoticed mercy,
every quiet breath
be another invitation
to remember.

For You have never stopped
speaking.

The silence
was only
my forgetting.