SledgeHammerHeart

        I dug up this poem that I wrote a year ago next week. Back then, it was the first truly emotive piece of writing that I had shared with another person in years. I wrote it a few days after my heart exploded, and I sent it to the woman who blew it up.
        When I read it today, many things come up for me. I can recall exactly how I felt a year ago. The intense power of such heartache isn’t there now, but it’s memory shall always remain.
        That’s not a bad thing at all. It helps remind me of how far I’ve come in a year. How much I’ve grown. How much I’ve changed. It helps remind me that today, love is a vibrant, living, breathing, feeling, spirit that pervades all of my life. It reminds me that I really have made a quantum emotional shift. And that shift has allowed me to become so much more of myself.
        This poem represents the beginning of the finest year of writing of my life.


SledgeHammerHeart

why did my heart have to break to be opened up?

was my heart like a geode? a rock that housed a beautiful crystal on the inside. but the only way you could get to the crystal was to break the rock wide open?

i did everything i could to not have my heart broken. and it still happened. so what does that tell me?

maybe that to hide your heart is a waste of time. and energy. and love.

how could she break my heart if there was nothing there to break? she couldn’t have. so there was something there. or i wouldn’t feel this way. i just couldn’t get to it. and i couldn’t let her get to it either.

but she did. and i didn’t even know it. and i spent all that time hiding when i could have been seeking. for something. with her.

why does it take so much pain to be able to feel something that was there all the time?

why does it take a sledge hammer to smash a beautiful soft heart?

because it was a heart disguised as a rock.

you tap on what looks like a rock, what feels like a rock, and nothing appears to be happening. but something is happening. because the rock is really a soft heart. so finally you get tired of tapping and smash it open. and only then does the illusion of the rock disappear.

only then do you see that it’s not a rock at all. it’s not hard and cold. it’s soft and warm.

and it’s splattered all over my life.

and i played just as much a part in splattering my heart as she did. i can’t be mad at her, and i’m not. i can’t be mad at me. and i’m not.

but i am so sad.

sad that i couldn’t remove the illusion of the rock.

and the heart is really who i am.

it’s big and soft and warm and beautiful.

but i just couldn’t let her see that.

and now that’s all i want her to see.

we were both great illusionists. i created the illusion that i didn’t care that much. she created the illusion that things were okay.

i wonder how it would be with no illusions?

she reached my heart.

and she didn’t even know it.

because i didn’t even know it.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Flintstone quarry of Wrongs) Reserved.