You are born with two hearts. The fact alone renders you unforgivable. It’s not your fault. A hidden vessel sleeps beneath your breastbone. A breach in you. A faultline. Your mother’s voice lifts, quakes: What kind of daughter does that? As if the second heart is a choice made in the dark of the womb — no, thank you, one is enough — when the atrial wall fuses. You feel it, always. The excess weight between each breath. Another beat; another valve, open and shut. Twelve years old, unaware. A girl in goal with a loose ponytail and scraped knees. Her veined hand reaches for yours when you slip on a damp leaf. Later, in the tent, her broader shoulders radiate borrowed warmth. That’s when you hear it. First. The second hum. A trembling filament braided beneath your pulse. It should not exist. The heart is revered for its singularity. You have two. You faint at fifteen and your mother finds the truth at her fingertips. Wrongness, not yet defined. You don't have an ECG. Can't. There’s no indication, doctors reiterate. There's never been a reason for them to know, so they don’t. Know. A voice crack. There’s something wrong with her, your mother pleads. She doesn’t say chest pain, but she comes so, so close. Without a stethoscope, she presses her ear to your sternum. Without anaesthetic, you imagine the knife’s descent. The slice, the split, the slick heat of prying out the muscle that rendered you so wrong.

I keep mine tucked between my ribs. Folded with lopsided corners that don’t quite touch. The paper has softened over time—creased thin as breath, held by the hollow of my body. My name in cursive, signed with her tongue. Her name grazing my throat as her teeth graze my thigh. Her lips press punctuation into bare skin. A comma follows a new confession. Syllables slip through silence, settle at my sternum. Can you keep a secret? Our smudged secret. Loosens. Then scrapes my throat. I inhale the margin where her shoulder meets her neck. It rustles—restless against the crevice of its cage. Unfurling in my throat, insistent and waiting behind my tongue.