The heart-keepers

The most precious thing I have ever been able to give you is a piece of my heart. It was given completely on accident, however. Somewhere between the moment where you first spoke up in English class and the time we had our first conversation and your eyes floated to meet mine, I opened the cage to my heart -- that then was so fingerprinted and oily, I felt for my heart so much -- and entrusted a piece to your hands. I think the piece came from the lower right side, because recently that part has been hurting.

You’re not the only one I’ve ever favored this way, of course. Back then I gave out bits and pieces left and right. To the girls who I tried to invite to go to a corn maze with me. To my brother. To the coach of my swim team. To the boy who sat behind me in choir. I thought well of the people I lent the shards to. I trusted that our relationships would flower, that the bit in their possession would grow -- or, at least, stay safe.

But over time I have learned not to idealize people. I have learned not to think so well of them. Their cages rasped and rattled in their chests, and the little pocket where my heart should have been stored, if they had loved it, was vacant while my shard lay in the dust. They abandoned my piece to store someone else’s, instead. They strung the piece along, tossing it into the air and pretending they were going to drop it, as I watched -- before finally, cruel and stony-eyed, it hit the pavement and their heel ground into the dirt what was left. They discounted its worth and returned my piece to me with excuses. They lost the piece and pretended they hadn’t, but I felt the absence and knew they lied and knew they cared not enough to keep it safe or to tell the truth.

This pain left a lasting impression. The cage opened less and less frequently. Some of the pieces in my possession I guarded more jealously, while others I gave up in hurt bewilderment because their owners had asked for them back, and still others I smashed in the cruel, agonized revenge of not wanting to care for someone who cared so little for me.

What pieces of my heart were abandoned, I hunted out, and found them along the hallways of school, along the green sunlit roads where I was alone. I glued them back where they had come from. The parts that had been broken I picked up, and painstakingly put them together again; some of the bits are still missing, and the shard looks ugly, with warps and discolorations because of the way the glass was shattered. The parts that were returned I could not decide whether to trash or to replace. The parts that were lost, I could not find.

After all this, I find myself here today. I sit on the stone steps, my hair still slightly damp from showering, warm wind wafting around me. The fountain surges from the heart of the pond and ripples spread in concentric circles from the leap of a fish, not ten feet away from me. Cars race along along the highway as the lights in the sky fade.

I feel for the clasp of the cage at my chest, and look down at it. The golden bars are dusty. They have not been polished in a year. Along the velvet lining lie ten or twelve pulsating pieces that I was asked to keep for others. Some pieces are larger than others. I keep the largest further back, because those people that trust me, I want to prove right.

Nestled in the very center lies my own heart. I feel warm tears rasp at my vision. Little has been able to make me cry lately, but this sight is enough. It is not that my heart is battered, because it is. It is not that I can see smears of glue, because I can. It is not because of the chips, the cracks, the little fragments that fall off as I lift my heart out of my chest and hold it in my hands before me. I run my thumb over the purple surface. No, what makes me cry is not the light inside, still glowing, though fainter than usual. What does make me cry are the pieces still missing, of course.

Little chunks have been pulled from the center. Those I entrusted with my family members, but two of those pieces are never coming back, one that has been smashed and one I myself hurled into the woods because memory had diseased it so much. On the corner, another piece is missing, and I fear that piece is coming back shortly. On top a shard is missing that I feel no regrets for, and when I run my hand over the vacancy, I smile at the lack of pain. But yes, there is that divot at the base of my heart, too. The piece you hold today. I examine the clean sides of the gap. You took this piece so cleanly. It had seemed so natural at the time. But it hurts to know that you own it. Because you no longer seem to care.

Locking my heart back up, staring at the gray horizon, the same old magic of night and fireflies breathing up from the earth, I cannot decide what to do: to ask for the piece back before you break it, or to leave the piece gone. As badly as it hurts, it will go numb someday; and I would rather the reminder of the pain so that I will not repeat history, than to end up giving that piece to someone else.
-- why did I deserve this?