Heartspace

For whatever reason, conjuring the map of my heart, the physical construct of it, eludes. It’s probably because I am the most pitiful of artists. This is not false modesty. Ask anyone who has played Pictionary with me and they will attest. If I could manage a steady hand and draw my love chamber, I’d choose a delightfully fat pink marker. Let’s make it a Mr. Sketch that smells like watermelon.

But if I can’t sketch her, how will I possibly satisfy this prompt?

“all that we dress our hearts in”

I read this line in the “about this” epilogue for a poem entitled Hon or We have both traveled from the other side of some hill, one side of which we may wish we could forget. This title is most certainly testimony that one can do whatever one likes in the world of writer poet.

So. How might my glorious ticker be dressed?

She’d be wearing a crown of course, adored and adorned. She’s the queen bee, without whom the entire operation goes kaput. No dainty tiara for her. Think Queen Elizabeth in the Imperial State Crown at the opening of Parliament! White ermine fur for comfort, purple velvet poof, arches of brilliant diamonds, appliques of emerald, sapphire and pearl. The grandeur is befitting a heart that loves with such power and ancestral knowing. Love with a capital L. Bawdy and effusive, a tell it like it is, make a fool of yourself, shout it from the mountain tops kind of love. A love for her people, yes of course. But also of oceans and sky, prose and poetry, the smell of lilacs and baking bread. Buckets and buckets of all kinds of scrumptiousness.

There, draped around her upper chambers is a sensible cardigan, of soft cotton and dark blue, for this heart of mine can run cold. All that braying, the prancing about with fiery heart exposed to a hurting world, inevitably wounds. These tender bits a betrayal to the formidable myocardium and all its unsentimental pumping. Sometimes, though, I take my sweater off and lend it to another, to someone deprived of love, or lonely, or grieving. Strangely, the heart thrills in this nakedness and expands like the Grinch’s on Christmas morning in Whoville.