Soft Heart

How do you keep a soft heart?

Every day my heart threatens to shut you out. Every day my mind threatens to let you back in.

In the morning, as I stare at screens and sip my coffee, my heart starts building a wall.

My brain waits, evaluating — can I still see over? It waits, because it knows my heart will grow weary.

Then, when my heart cannot fight back, my brain gets to work tearing down the wall piece by piece. Recycling the materials, knowing they’ll be needed again tomorrow.

It chants while it works — If I can see you, you can see me, and we can see that we will be okay.

But will we be okay, my heart asks? My brain sits silently in its buoyant reality. My heart grows jealous of its natural protection from the hard skull surrounding its little world. What right do you have to control me from up there? The heart wants to know.

My brain stays silent. It’s on autopilot. It doesn’t have to think about my heart if it focuses on other things — the screens and the coffee. It can feed itself in rapid succession. Create an army of information.

My furious little heart begins its crusade of construction once again and my unyielding brain waits patiently to clean up the mess. The wall will be gone by morning.

When you feel pain, anger, and disappointment, how do you resist hardening your insides against it — against the people who make you feel it?

How do you keep a soft heart? By not allowing it to build walls, my brain answers.

My heart is fluttering furiously inside my chest in protest even now.

Let me protect myself, it begs.