I see my heart as an antique box.
It is rich, dark, wooden, and beautifully shaped.
It has an intricately designed iron key sticking out of it.
It is heart-shaped, in fact, because why not?
Maybe it’s the Nirvana of it all.
Sometimes, the obvious choice is the best one.
Inside this box are rooms and shelves.
There are open spaces and hidden places.
I keep my heart unlocked, the key is there for decoration.
It is meant to make you assume there is a guard up,
and also to make me feel that I am safe.
The truth is, that my heart is always open.
Now, some may see that as a design flaw,
but it has been the way I have learned the hardest lessons in life.
There are special places in my heart for all my best memories.
I keep them in beautiful rooms with natural light and vases of flowers.
I have a special place for all of my bad memories. I keep them in old ratty boxes, hidden on shelves in dark closets.
I have spaces for friendship, laughter, and love. I put these feelings in little white clouds and stare up at them, surrounded by blue sky and sunshine.
I have hallways for anger, resentment, and hate. The hallway goes from the opening to the closing; it is in and out…I don’t make space for them; I just allow them to pass through, like tornadoes or ferocious fires…causing havoc, throwing a fit, and changing the temperature of everything around them. Once they are out, everything goes back in its proper place.
I used to hoard sadness in a beautiful room that I wasted and filled to the ceiling with no breathing space. The sadness would leak out into other rooms, always filling the air with its dank scent. It became an invasion, an infection. I felt I had to nourish it to make it go away, so I went to it daily, fed it, and watered it. But it didn’t change. It lied to me and continued to grow like mold, a danger to me each time I was exposed.
So I stopped.
I don’t visit it anymore. I don’t bring my time and energy; I just leave it be.
And you know what? I think it is working. I think it is starving and shrinking. Every once in a while, I peek in on it because sadness is just a part of life, and it will always have some space inside of me, but every time I look, I can see that the beautiful space it once flooded is beginning to show itself again.