The Next Time

The next time my heart breaks, I would like it to happen all at once. A complete shattering. A plate sliding from the hutch top-shelf with a crash that shakes even the floor. I would like the pieces so tiny scattered so far the original becomes unrecognizable. A plate, a pitcher, a gravy bowl, my heart.

I want to feel it all at once. Collapse to the floor to salvage the pieces, to find I must begin again. Begin again from nothing. This heart un-salvageable. Begin again from nothing.

Rather than. Rather than chipping away tiny nick by tiny nick. Perfect except. Chip chip. Glued together. Well loved, entirely functioning but. Hairline crack. Archive the crack, tell it's story, talk of character building. When piece by piece, crack by crack, it breaks. Set it aside, for repair, for discard, in the back corner of the shelf. Out of sight, out of mind. And move on, while it sits, waiting.

I craft this perfect break. This shattering, crashing, falling, the unforgiving pieces, while tracing my finger over old cracks. The jagged edges elicit a little more than dull pain. A little less than the threat of a cut. Without blood. Without comfort. And I realize

I have this all wrong.

The next time I'll get it right.

I'll say what I mean and I'll mean what I say and I'll know. How everything I worry about means so little. Next time I'll decide, again again again like I did in times too far past, to walk next to or in front of, but never again behind, fear. The next time I love.

I know how to break my own heart. Alone in the dark of night, alone in the sun-drenched afternoon. Shatter it, quick and loud, dropped from the top shelf. To take it cracked and chipped from the back corner of the shelf and push it over the edge into a million tiny  pieces. So I can start again anew. After that, what is there left to fear?

The next time, I'll get it right.

Lessons in Honesty

My phone buzzes twice; I pull it out of my pocket. Breath held as I long-await a response of no significance and too much significance, with too much space in the between. "Hey I love you," the screen reads. Tears well up and threaten to spill. Amid these strangers and their casual conversations.

"It must be more than an interest," he comments, "you must have a devotion." I think of the years wrapped up in, held by, rocked by, steadied by this quiet love. This quiet love that holds my hand and leads the way when all I see is the chaos of my life swirling, when I close my eyes and wait to collapse. Should I, I should, shout this from the mountain tops.? Or at least, these days, to myself in a strong whisper: I love I want I care I am devoted. Honest declaration. If only in a strong whisper. Begin here.

After years, this is, perhaps, the only place I can begin. This is, perhaps, the safest place to begin.

It had been lifetimes since cologne-crushed tears fell. Burning, hot and acidic. A litmus test that would read: eyes diverted and hands dropped, the heart that has clawed its way into the throat plummets - falls into vast empty space.

To be shocked by these acid tears, this unexpected litmus test result - I have been eagerly dishonest with myself. A self-preservation method with an acidity level that eats away faster than realized. I didn't realize. Any of it.

She, too many miles away, practiced in letting me cry until the red rash appears on the tops of my cheeks and supporting my weight and my head on her shoulder, feels just that - too many miles away. A seasoned expert on me, she knows it is coming before I do. She holds my honesty when I am not strong enough to carry it.

I'll announce in a strong whisper to an empty room that I am building a career in a field I love. I love I want I care I am devoted. Honestly. Tangled or purposefully intertwined, the rest I cannot claim in a whisper to an empty room. I'm drowning in the divide between no significance and too much significance, filled with my own tears, into which I tripped and fell because I wasn't paying close enough attention. To my heart as it squeezed up and out of my rib cage trying to get to his. To how high it had climbed. To how far down of a drop it faced.

"Hey I love you," she texted me because she knew and she knows. And now, at least I know.  All of it.