I have snails on my heart and they leave slime trails all over my ventricles and suction
to the insides of my aorta. Although they don’t have any feet, the feeling of them crawling around in tiny paths is like constantly being tickled while I breathe. Tide pools form where my blood pumps out like a terrarium. I like to pick at them like scabs
until they fall off with a satisfying pop as they unsuction from my capillaries and fall to the depths of my stomach. My heart is a rock in the harbor, and sometimes it can feel alright. To be where there are protective sheets of green algae or particularly
smooth parts of the external muscle. But sometimes there are barnacles with edges so thin I do not notice they are lodged in me until lines of red stream like little blood worms. There are parts of my heart where the tide has gone in and out so many times
that it darkened in color and started to wrinkle. And sometimes I stand on the rocks for too long and when I turn around I realize that the tide has come in too deep and I can’t swim back.