when your heart opens,
wide and unassuming,
chances are it will break.
for time and time again we learn
of hurt and sorrow,
of darkness,
tangible yet elusive,
like the scrawls and smudges of a madman.

some hearts shatter.
all at once smashed, like a hammer to glass.
scattered and kicked around in their past,
fatigued and feeble,
wounded and patchy.
pieces swept up and glued,
embedded in one dark memory.
unforgettable, unforgivable, memory seizes the tired muscle,
choking it, leaving a faint pulse gasping
for some hopeless release.

there are, however, a mighty few--
or maybe a lucky few,
who open up wide and wild, unabashed.
hearts so familiar with ache,
they stretch and pump throbbing, scarred muscles until,
like tired, sunburned fingers soaking up the last bit of the summer sun,
they tremble with exhaustion.
too big to break,
and too strong to shatter.

and oh, those lucky few
who have tried and triumphed,
and churned their heartbreaks into a potent force,
end up so bold, so dauntless,
absorbing the others
as they open.
they scoop up the shattered
they cradle the broken.
though not as quickly,
for bruised hearts carry unfair weight.

together they reach the sun,
and relax their strained, desperate tendons.
and though unfamiliar,
they gently shake awake old muscles
and remember their smile--
the broken,
the shattered,
and the lucky ones.