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HUMAN Flash fiction by Clara Berut-Lhopital Illustration by Bethany Jayne Studio I was born with a broken heart. Quite literally. It was full of holes and the blood would sip from one place to the other without rhyme or reason. I wouldn’t stay alive for long with this Swiss cheese of a heart. So I went to the hospital with my young parents and magic hands stitched the holes, most of them anyway. So I could live. It took patience and dedication. It was scary and long. It wasn’t easy either. For them or for me. I sometimes wonder if I really wanted to live this life, this human life. But I stayed. For them, and maybe for me. And now my heart is a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger than other people’s hearts. It has to be. Keeping me alive, and them too. Pumping blood that doesn’t always go where it’s supposed to. Since then, it hasn’t been a walk in the park. People have tried to steal my heart. I don’t blame them. A heart like this is precious and rare. But when they took it behind my back. I had to fight to get it back. Every time, the holes were back. And I didn’t have magic hands to stitch them back. There was blood, there was pain. I didn’t want that again. So it became a run in the park. Running away from the thieves and their greedy hands. Until I ran out of breath and had to get rest. I found a tree I could sit under, to protect me from the weather. I tried to catch my breath and mend my heart. I didn’t know what it would take. I didn’t know what was at stake. For a little while, I didn’t want this heart. I didn’t want these wounds, this pain. I resented being human, in this body, in this mind. I wanted a “normal” heart, no holes, no stitches, no pain. Wasn’t it what it should always have been? Wasn’t it supposed to be more beautiful than this? I couldn’t believe that hearts were just meant to be broken. I had a long cry, and sat there for a while, watching people pass by. And then I started noticing, a lot of them seemed to be weary, like they were carrying something heavy. Was their heart as heavy as mine? What did it mean to be human, in their hearts and mind? Maybe they weren’t born with a broken heart. Maybe theirs weren’t as vulnerable as mine, but they certainly weren’t immaculate the way I had imagined. They were a little broken too for sure. I wondered… Could it be okay that it was this way? If there was no ‘normal’, no ‘unbroken’ then where was the beauty to be found? Where was the light in our human condition? Was there any? On my own, I had imagined I was the only one in pain. The only one to feel the shame that comes with believing I am the problem. I was not. Not the only one. Not the problem. Maybe their pain felt different. Maybe their wounds didn’t look like mine, but they knew the pain of a broken heart. They knew what it was to be human. A million different ways. And maybe this is it, the beauty, to do it together. To be part of a community. A community that chooses to be human, when then could choose to be so many other things. A community that hurts together and know the pain will fade. A community that creates the beauty they want to see. It isn’t easy to be human. And more often than not, it breaks my heart. More than I could say. But in the rubble, sometimes, there is magic, like the magic living in the hands that stitched my heart. And made me stay alive. Scars, holes and all. I am human, and that is fine. 60