The Average Heart
by Tammy L Evans
The average heart is the size of a fist in an adult.
She steps nose to nose with the mirror and studies the charcoal, violet, and crimson mark across her left eye. It matches the size of his heart. What she sees are her pores large and gapping. She would have to pick up some treatment. More soap too. She focuses her attention and fingertips and pat the swollen flesh.
Your heart will beat 115,000 each day.
Her heart thumps twice its rate as she listens to knuckle bones crack the wall and footsteps. The rhythm reminds her of a song she from her youth. The frames clatter to the floor. It will take some time tomorrow to find all the glass pieces.
An electrical system controls the rhythm of your heart.
She opens the sliding glass door in the bedroom and loops around the house carefully stepping with her bare feet. Down the stairs to the fuse box to control the blackness.
The first open heart surgery was in 1893.
The knife did not want to cooperate. She had not sharpened them in weeks. It was messy and she should have laid down a tarp. Next time. The mallet would have to do to get through the ribs. Sweat dripped from her nose. The curve of her back over him appeared as if she would embrace him.
The heart can continue beating even when it is disconnected from the body.
His heart beats in her cupped hands, liquid running down her arms and dripping from her fingers. It slows down. The bottom of her legs sit in a scarlet puddle.
I told him. I fucking told him.
This piece was originally published in Elephants Never.
Tammy L. Evans is a writer, teacher, and professional curator living in a tiny house on a peninsula with her husband, fuzzy adventure cat, and a parkour-loving black kitten. Her location device is her loud laugh. She is the creator and host of THE TRIO COURSE. Her poetry has been published in The Storyteller, FoxGlove Journal, Story Hall, Blue Insights, The Partnered Pen, and others. Her fiction has been published in Gone Lawn, South Florida Poetry Journal, Cabinets of Heed, Spelk, Five on the Fifth, Fiction Berlin Kitchen, and longlisted for the Welkin Prize 2026.
THIS IS DELICIOUS.