On Matters Of The Heart

bend.

“I feel my heart bending. It stops just short of breaking, and somehow that hurts more.” — Patricia Smith, Dancer of the World

———

I say my heart can’t take too much of breaking and yet, it bends in every which way. From the time the sun rises to the moment the moon claims its place in the sky, there is movement deep within my chest, somewhere between my lungs.

Every waking moment, my heart contorts, twists, performs a plié. In grief, in sorrow, in union with those experiencing inequity and overwhelming tragedy. In anguish, in prayer, in acts of communal lamentation. My heart bends. In hope, in waiting, in yearning. In awe, in reminiscence, in an unequivocal declaration of love.

My heart bends in a million places. It bends to the cry of thousands in a broken land. It bends from the madness and the chaos of this world. It bends towards the light. It bends into the hum of my lover’s breath, beneath the branches of a willow tree, its motion a tango along the outskirts of my current mind. In every which way, there my heart goes.

While I may be able to circumvent the act of breaking, I cannot stop my heart from bending. I am unable to deny my sight, therefore I cannot abate my feelings. I cannot abort my conviction to be a witness to the woes and the wonders of this world.

I have come to accept that the heart-bend is necessity for my construction of meaning. Without the tiny flutters, without the creases in this blood-pumping organ of mine, life is a vain and hollow experience. It is within the act of bending, the stopping just short of breaking, that my soul swells with revelation time and time again.

It is within the act of bending that the knowings of love soothes the occurrences of hatred. That the laughter fills my lungs even when my spirit is low. It is within the act of bending that meaning comes knocking on the door of my soul, begging for me to open myself up to all the complexities of life. To keep myself available to concern.

Because a heart devoid of the ability to feel is a heart prone to indifference — and that shall be no heart of mine.