We cannot say you had a heart attack,
the doctor said, for he had done his part.
Not every broken heart is cardiac.
No clots, no arteries pinched off by plaque.
They speculated deep inside the heart:
We wouldn’t say you had a heart attack.
Why then does the hurt keep coming back,
some days enough to tear the day apart?
A broken heart is more than cardiac.
And what to call this reassuring lack
of proof for nasty rumors in the chart?
For technically, I didn’t have a heart attack.
But technically, the scans make light look dark
and science, technically, becomes an art
and technically, this broken heart’s intact.
The heart of the ache in heartache is its knack
for seeming both an ocean and a dart.
They cannot say I had a heart attack.
My broken heart is more than cardiac.
Don Colburn has published four collections of poems, most recently a chapbook called Tomorrow Too: The Brenda Monologues. A longtime reporter for The Washington Post and The Oregonian, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and his poems have appeared in magazines such as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest and Southern Poetry Review. His first chapbook, Another Way to Begin, won the Finishing Line Press Poetry Prize, and his full-length book, As If Gravity Were a Theory, won the Cider Press Book Award. Other writing honors include the Discovery/The Nation Award, two residencies at The MacDowell Colony and three Pushcart nominations. He lives in Portland, OR.
