Feb 2021
What are we to do when the heart wanes within us?
The heart situated at the right, not left, side of our chest.
What are we to do when that heart of passion, of righteous childishness and inextricable source of creativity dies inside like a once brisk, healthy and vivid dove? What shall we as an individual do then?
At times, I am leaning over heaps of paper or the dazzling light of the monitor’s, all displaying to me a cluster of words and complex terms, and a sudden, abrupt, as stealthy and as cunning as a killer air comes about me, enveloping me as if my time has come.
A ball of tissue plugging my mouth, my screams.
An invisible sack draped round my head, and the platform forced to give in under my momentary weight
And then to sway sadly as I stared at it in disbelief and indignation, eyes bulging and feet groping in vain until I should, at last, gain the rest all humans are robbed of when born, but granted back when gone.
Then I can scarcely understand the words proclaiming importance, and stare at them as if already dead, stuck as if in an awkward moment wherein one is unfortunately sacrificed for the pleasure and confidence of the one whom ridicules them, indicating to their chums, to the curious bystanders, the fool they’ve targeted for the day, and beginning to eat you alive with their jeering remarks and guffaws like the fangs of a vicious wolf. I continue to stare, as I do in those moments of humiliation, at the heaps of paper, at the army of words, and feel my jaw slipping atop my palms until my dampened brow connects with the table and a temporary relief is lightened in my heart like a fire amidst a gale. Then it is killed, and the words insist on being read, threatening you like a battalion of enemy soldiers, their muzzles aimed at you like a watching eye, or the fascinated eyes of the bullies, the bystanders. The wolfs. And you see all of their ugly faces, coming to life in those papers, those words and those threats.
Though on those days, sometimes I find a flicker of hope, as only on days when I still find the self-confidence to resist those blankets of sleep, the rope of dread or the painful remarks, do I know there is still a person within me worth fighting for.
The heart situated at the right, not left, side of our chest.
What are we to do when that heart of passion, of righteous childishness and inextricable source of creativity dies inside like a once brisk, healthy and vivid dove? What shall we as an individual do then?
At times, I am leaning over heaps of paper or the dazzling light of the monitor’s, all displaying to me a cluster of words and complex terms, and a sudden, abrupt, as stealthy and as cunning as a killer air comes about me, enveloping me as if my time has come.
A ball of tissue plugging my mouth, my screams.
An invisible sack draped round my head, and the platform forced to give in under my momentary weight
And then to sway sadly as I stared at it in disbelief and indignation, eyes bulging and feet groping in vain until I should, at last, gain the rest all humans are robbed of when born, but granted back when gone.
Then I can scarcely understand the words proclaiming importance, and stare at them as if already dead, stuck as if in an awkward moment wherein one is unfortunately sacrificed for the pleasure and confidence of the one whom ridicules them, indicating to their chums, to the curious bystanders, the fool they’ve targeted for the day, and beginning to eat you alive with their jeering remarks and guffaws like the fangs of a vicious wolf. I continue to stare, as I do in those moments of humiliation, at the heaps of paper, at the army of words, and feel my jaw slipping atop my palms until my dampened brow connects with the table and a temporary relief is lightened in my heart like a fire amidst a gale. Then it is killed, and the words insist on being read, threatening you like a battalion of enemy soldiers, their muzzles aimed at you like a watching eye, or the fascinated eyes of the bullies, the bystanders. The wolfs. And you see all of their ugly faces, coming to life in those papers, those words and those threats.
Though on those days, sometimes I find a flicker of hope, as only on days when I still find the self-confidence to resist those blankets of sleep, the rope of dread or the painful remarks, do I know there is still a person within me worth fighting for.
