Hello friends! I have missed you. I can't believe it's been ten whole years. There is SO much to catch you up on.
I want to catch you up on happier things, but I was looking through some of the poetry I've written since I took a pause on blogging and focused on my fiction writing (more on that in a future post!).
Here is a poem I wrote about dating after divorce. I am sorry it is sad! I wrote this five (?) years ago and am in a much better place now. If anyone else is going through this, it does get better, I promise.
Proof That I Have a Heart
Sometimes I forget I have a heart.
It sits, rusting, inside my tin chest,
As I go about my everyday,
Pretending I’m all armor and bones,
Never sinew and flesh.
Everything is doing,
Never feeling.
I check off boxes,
I feed children and get the mail
And rake the yard.
Once in a blue moon,
I go on a date.
I always curl my hair,
And I laugh in my most lighthearted way
And touch his arm at all the right moments.
But once in a while,
One of these Tourist-dates
Breaks in,
Or perhaps I give away the location of the key,
Otherwise hidden in a tangle of overgrown brush?
I’m never ready for this thing
That happens next,
No matter how many times it occurs.
I think—oh! I’ll just give him a tour
Of the castle.
I forget there’s a rusted heart
In the center court,
Because on regular days,
We, the castle folk,
Go about our business,
Hardly noticing it’s there.
In my way, I think that letting him in
Won’t change a thing!
He’ll pay his five pounds fifty,
He’ll watch the servants bustling to and fro—
And then leave.
After all, he says he has
always wanted to see this place.
But in reality, the second he
Turns the key in the rusted lock,
The heart feels exposed there,
On the rock,
In its meager cage of aged iron
And rusted bolts.
I forget that hearts notice
Strangers,
That they beat faster
When we let someone in
The gate,
No matter how secure
We think a heart is
In its cage,
No matter how long it has been
Since we have felt it
Stir.
And then things happen as they always do.
He wants to see the gallery,
Where the light slants across the paintings
Of my forefathers.
Then he wants to climb the tower,
Where the ancient arms of a clock touch the hours,
Where gears whir and spin.
But most of all, he
Wants to see the treasure room,
Where everything is locked away.
We (nobles and commoners alike) think it will be fine to let him in.
We like it when he runs his hand over
The gold, glinting in the torchlight, because we
Think he sees the beauty in what we’ve been
Saving and protecting
For so long.
We don’t know
(Despite how many times this has happened)
That he’s not a connoisseur of these things,
He’s actually just an idle tourist,
Filling his bags with souvenirs--
With things we never meant to give away.
When he goes,
We’re as stoic as ever,
Closing the gate behind him with a bright smile
And lots of exclamation points!
But he avoids our eyes.
He will be back soon—
But
Maybe don’t plan on a specific day
?
These things are hard to pin down.
He adjusts the satchel on his back
Like it’s already too heavy for him
To carry.
It isn’t until he’s gone that it strikes,
The spreading pain,
The blur of movement inside the cage.
Why is it only when we feel it ache
That the heart seems so real?
Why is it that something has to be taken
From us
To make us feel?
I rest my head against the door
For the longest time,
In the moonless courtyard,
The key held tight in my palm.
I try not to feel the way the iron
Burns into my caged heart,
Try to remind myself that this pain
Means that I’m not just a tin man or a robot who
Shows wandering tourists into a soulless
Cave.
This fortress was built to contain
This heart, after all,
Wasn’t it?
I take it out of its rusted cage
For the first time in years
And hold it,
Beating,
In my two hands.
I’ll think twice about how I screen these
Fellows, I promise it,
(a promise I’ve made before)--
These idle tourists,
These strangers-
Turned-thieves.
