SAT Question
A woman gets on a train in Union Station headed East.
The train will travel at a hundred miles an hour,
it will make no stops until reaching its destination.
Before boarding, she cut out her heart
and left it beating on a bench with a note:
Dear Henry, this is for you, this has always been
and will always be for you.
Henry arrives at Union Station an hour later
with his wife and two kids. His youngest son finds
the beating heart. Dad, this has your name on it.
He quickly takes it. Don’t tell your mother about this,
go board the train, tell mom I’ll be right there champ.
Henry sits with the beating heart on his lap
watching it expand and retract, expand and retract.
His fingers remember the rhythm of its beats.
His chest harmonizes with the palpitations.
He cannot take it on the train.
He resolves to cut out his own,
and place them both on the bench,
beating in unison, the only way they know how.
He boards a train headed West,
going a hundred miles an hour,
with his wife and kids, never to return.
The two hearts sit on a bench in Union Station,
destined to die without bodies to house them.
Whose heart stops beating first?
