Another story about the heart.. a little bit differently done. |
I can tell that something is missing. Something important. I stick my fingers through my chest, pushing into the gelatinous, fleshy skin, and wiggling my way past guard dog ribs, slipping each finger through the tissue in between the long pearl bones. My thumb is too crooked to fit (it was broken once, long ago) so I hook that around the outside of my rib cage, letting the weight of my arm rest on it. I am at my heart, and I can feel it brush against my fingertips with each little thump. Gingerly, I began an examination, searching, searching. At first, I don’t notice anything amiss, there is only the gentle thrum of blood, and I almost give up, and pull my hand away. Oh, but there. I feel it, at last. Somewhere just behind the left ventricle (of course it would be there, I muse, remembering the weaknesses of each piece of heart). A little hole. Sharp-edged, like a piece of glass cracked away. It’s thin, and I can feel the entire space with the tip of my pinky. It is in that moment that I know what is missing, and with a sigh, I let my hand slide easily back out of my body, watching the skin gel together with a sad hum. I lie in a little ball, pushing my fingers against my muscle and bones, and think about this. About this little, almost not-there hole, and wonder how it can make me so uneasy, to have just that little bit missing. And then I realize. This shard of heart isn’t missing. I know exactly where I have laid it. I put it in a tree, and then wrote, in such neat, straight, script, (my Ts resembled the cross on a church) a clue. A riddle, a hunt (Oh, how my heart does love a good game). The ending prize, “Whomsoever finds this, will have a little piece of something so very strong.” So strong, and yet, I’m afraid it might get thrown away, and it will be lost to me. |