Michael Lawrence Dwiggins
It Wasn't the Heart

     It wasn't the heart.  It was, again, the memory.  Or should I 
say the many small memories which make a big memory-the kind 
of big memory that screams silently.  The kind of big memory that
becomes a wall you smash into.  The kind of big memory that 
becomes, over time, an active but silent presence that takes on a
life of its own and takes over the life I call my own.  You know how
the little memories occur.  Once you were sick but they didn't
believe you.  You had to sit there, feel sick but wonder maybe 
you weren't sick.  Or when you told them you didn't lie and you
were so scared you were crying and they said since you were
crying you must have lied and you began to wonder if maybe you
did lie and just forgot.  Or when you were playing cowboys with
you sister and she nearly hung you because you believed she
wouldn't kick the ladder out but you got a spanking for being 
stupid and you began to suspect maybe you were stupid.  So all
these little memories kept accumulating until one day you felt 
really sick but you know grown men don't complain, get sick or go 
to the doctor.  Then you collapsed and found out that you're now sick
from something you won't recover from.  And all along your heart
knew-but the little big memory was at the wheel....