Ann Hostetler

MAY 2006 Vespers I see my mother's heart its chambers pumping rhythmically once more. She watches, too, as the sonographer sends short inaudible waves through her skin. They return an image of atria opening to welcome oxygenated blood, cone-shaped echoes of movement in black and white. The last heart I'd seen pumping through sound waves belonged to a child cradled in my uterine walls. I remember the cool transducer sliding in slick gel across my taut belly, systolic and diastolic…