Exercises We Wanted to Share: My Heart

One of the highlights of my week is facilitating a weekly writing group at a "therapeutic community," a FT residence for women from various situations, including those recently from rehab/detox, the prison system, or the streets. Many are dealing with addiction issues. The focus of the group is generating work, and so on a typical night, we write, we share, we write some more. This past Monday, I suggested that the writers take ten minutes and use the phrase "My heart..." as a jumping off point. After reading the resultant pieces to one another, a member suggested that we share these with the world outside--and so here they are, offered humbly, from our hearts to yours. For privacy reasons, all pieces are being posted anonymously.

MY HEART

My heart is a bright red, flowing with Royal Red. My love pumps through my body, consuming my fears, making me rejoice and become hopeful for another day. In my Darkest Hour, on the Battlefield, my heart is proud, beating fast and hard as the legions of jealousy, envy, evil crowd around me. No tears. No fears, for I am a warrior ready for battle.

My heart is Sexual and Sensual, delivering liquid heat burning bright from passion. Like gasoline. Light a match and I explode in your arms, infecting your soul. And becoming one.

My heart is strong, loving. I love 'til death, clutching your hand, whispering honey in your ears. Causing the sweetness to cover you whole.

I am unconditional. I am loyal. I am true, my heart is of a royal blood line. Even in rags, I prevail the envious claw at my garments, just to feel the realness of my heart.

My heart is a red rose. I bloom in beauty. My aroma entices the lovers at their peak ecstasy. If my heart is mistreated and hurt, I die. I enclose. I fall apart. Petals hit the ground. Death has come. All gone. I turn cold, cold as ice, never to return to you ever again, ignore your existence. Forget you in all.

But I recover, in Birth again, in Spring, ready to give love all over again.

*****

BRIGHTNESS

At the moment my heart is closed, as the blood runs through it in vain. It goes flow, floater, fail. It cold. So cold that I don't know if it's my heart or a dream, as I lay here in my bed, thinking how my heart is beating faster and fast. It's the sound of rain on my window pane.

*****

SCREAMS, SCREAMS

Holla, holla
My heart is warm and open
Open like all the back doors.
Expanding to reach out to the horizons,
To all of the other souls that are open to be explored, saved, helped.
Like a baby calf and his mother, nourishing, nourishing, nourishment.
Some of my heart weeps for a lot of my sisters who are lost for all sorts of reasons,
Spiritually or either neglected.
I weep for my sisters, my biological and my paternal.
We are one. I just wish we could start to see the beauty in eachother
And grow higher than the tallest trees and the highest cloud.
Climb the beanstalk. Take flight
To hold our heads up and smile, for my heart is geared to repair or mend\
Or help or heal or touch to restore to want more for everyone.
Especially me. Myself, my heart is very open, receptive and I try
To keep it this way to function to breath.
No air!
Food for the soul.

*****

I HAVE FOUND MY HEART GOLD

My heart is aching now, with a frown. It's like torn in two. The other beat is slow, down. It's OK for now. I wear a frown to cover up the pain. So I slow down, take the arrow out of my heart. I want to live. I have to strive. For now, keep on and on. Don't stop, heart. I'll mend you back together, with the help of God. it will be one, a beat of life. So how can I mend my broken heart? Lay down. Take it slow. Be still. It will mend. I have a good heart, not a heart of stone. I have found my heart gold. It's not cold. Getting, warming, and warming to live.

My heart beats.

*****

LITTLE BREAK

There is a little break in this heart. Just a little. It's tender, it's tall, it's sitting on the shelf. But then again, then again, then again, not.

It beats, actively, strongly, moving through the places that defy logic, circumstance, all the spaces we have left to fill. And over and over and over again. When that space opens up, I'm like, A-ha! I quickly forget the inaccessible-wouldn't-really-care-for-him-if-he-were-available-anyway man. There is only the one who loves me, because he loves all of life and that's just what I see in his eyes.

Last week, I had a dream, buildings burning, full of fear, but not all the way, not 100% because somewhere, somehow I was still moving. And if everything was burning down around me, it would be hard not to say, hell yeah.

As Janis Joplin once said, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. And so if there is death then there is, too, rebirth, a rising, and when the smoke clears, I remember something. It's a voice, someone else's voice, saying, "My heart, it closed up one day and hasn't been open for business since."

Hearing those words terrifies me, in my own body, in my own head, maybe even in my own voice. But then, what we hear, what we are able to hear, is also what we can heal. And so there, I don't go back to the day my heart slammed shut. Nah. That would be for what? My heart, it doesn't want to be open for business ever again, to serve a transactional love that's not really love. That's what I need you to know.

There you are, my friend, eyes glowing, lit up by fireworks and tiki torches against the night sky. You are free, shimmering against a backdrop of so much more than our minds even understand.

Here, against that dark and lovely sky, is my life. I remember something: wake up, wake up, wake up, little butterfly. It's late and we have so far to go.