my heart still works

i fell asleep listening to my heartbeat last night. I say listening, even though this is technically impossible, because I was, actually, somehow listening.

I guess I wanted to make sure it was still working because it felt as though it had stopped. It broke a little bit. Again. And i suppose after anything breaks so many times, you wonder if it's finally that one time that is one time too many, ya know? Like that piece on my wooden sailboat that I've gorilla glued and super glued and hot glued so many times that if it were to even just be touched in the slightest of wrongish ways, the whole thing would probably just crumble. I suppose it is the definition of something fragile. Lots of things are fragile. The miniature ceramic flower planter of my mom's that i broke (and then hid) when i was 9- that was fragile. Mac earphones are fragile. I just threw away my third pair today. I let them ride around in my suitcase-size purse, pulling them out, throwing them back in, pulling them out.. They were likely in agony, being tangled in sunglasses and lipglosses, until one of those little earbuds had enough and threw itself into the bottom of the bag. Those things are fragile, and unexpectedly so. But there really isn't anything as fragile as my wooden boat. Nothing as fragile as something that may not even necessarily have been fragile to begin with.  But it was mistreated until it broke, then mended until it was mistreated and broken again. After enough times of this happening, I have almost officially retired the poor little wooden sailboat. It just sits there by my bed, and I look at it the same way you look at a homeless guy with a fifth of wild turkey in one had and 3 pennies in the other.  You want to help him out, but you know the destiny of your dollar is only more wild turkey and you don't want that for him, so you don't give him the dollar at all. That's the boat. I'd let him sail around a little, but i know he'd break, and i DON'T WANT IT TO BREAK so i don't.
It was so strong- the strongest of strongs- it was wood. WOOD. mistreated, it's now a withered conglomerate of glues. And i protect it for it's own sake.
Somewhere along the line, my heart theoretically became the boat. And it's sad to know that something once so strong- is at the mercy of you to protect it from crumbling.  When it wants to sail.  So when is it going to be that one-last-time? The one last time that it flings itself overboard like the earbud? Or that one of the heart glues that's held my heart pieces together just gives way..
So i listened to my heartbeat as i fell asleep and just laid there amazed with it. So proud of it. There it is, inside me, even now, and it's still beating. STILL.
It's the one thing that keeps a person alive. And it's the thing that if broken, hurts like nothing else ever could. But even now i feel it beating. And i'm rooting for it. Keep beating b-e-a-t-i-n-g beating! GO go GO!
It may be fragile in the fragilist of ways, but it's still beating. And i'm begining to think gorilla glue doesn't hold a candle to the glue that's keeping my heart together.
That stuff, whatever it is, is good..