my daughter says, holding out the cork coaster
chipped and stained with coffee, some Twin Peaks

memorabilia I bought on Etsy. “It’s Buddhist,”
I say, “it’s about healing, about needing

to heal,” I say. “Or die?” she says. She’s eight.
These days she reads to me: storybooks

at night, cereal boxes in the morning,
street signs and bistro menus and (I need

to be better about this): the blue text
messages on my phone. “Well, not really

die,” I say, “more like the idea of it;
like dying inside, but then continuing

to walk around and do things.” “Like zombies,”
she says. “Yes,” I say, uncertain, “zombies

are dead inside, and maybe need to heal
from something we can’t see.” “Their hearts,”

she says. “H-E-A-R-T-S. They should fix
their hearts. So they won’t eat other people’s.”

“I agree,” I say. Who could disagree
with that? I think briefly of her mother

and me, all the years we lived together
before we decided to open up

our hearts to even the idea of a third
heart joining us, pumping its own blood

in a cradle we took turns pushing
even in our sleep. And then the crash,

the booze, the towers of dirty dishes
and credit card bills ... now just detritus

of a storm that has passed, the memory
of a memory of a storm. “Right here,”

I say, “touch it. Is it fixed?” My daughter
touches my heart; then, without my asking,

her own. She doesn’t need her father
to heal her. Her heart will someday be hers

to fix; hers alone. I could sit like this
forever, or till I die. She blinks. “Not yet.”