I sit here and at night when it’s quiet, I can hear my mechanical mitral valve just ticking away. Tick, tick, tick. My reminder that I’m alive, with every moment marked by the clicking of metal doors inside my heart opening and closing.

It’s my reminder that I’m alive against the odds.

One time in recent years, I was speaking happily to him, the wasbund, about this sound. How I can hear it at times and how I like that. I find it comforting.

He complained that it’s too loud.

My heart ticking with life, keeping me literally alive, is too loud.

My existence is too loud.