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a Christmas season offering written many years ago.....Happy Christmas!

Everything I Know About the Human Heart

What do I know about the human heart? It’s far too fragile and much too big and it gets too heavy sometimes. It knows how to sing the sweetest songs, and it knows how to be black and hard.

The human heart. I’ve read it in books, so slowly in words that my heart almost stops. I’ve heard it in music, fast and joyous, quiet, graceful, full and empty.

The human heart. We all have one, though for some people I know I’d dispute that fact.

The human heart. Cupid sends arrows and we fall and we bleed and out of that comes love and sometimes sorrow and sometimes only fear.

The human heart. I know that it loves sunny days at the end of September and cold nights in February. I know that it cosies round other hearts and looks for the half of itself that it knows someone has. My husband carries half my heart and I carry his. We’ve traded you see, so that I can feel what he feels and he knows what I know, and we get mad sometimes because the other is holding a little too tight or got careless and left our heart somewhere for a while.

What I know about the human heart. I gave part of mine to my son at his birth, no, even before when I saw him move across the skin of my belly. I gave him part, or he took it perhaps, but when he was born it went with him. And he holds it with him everywhere and he doesn’t always know that, but I know and he’ll be safe with it.

What do I know about the human heart? I know that it rises and falls as the sun. I know that each one I love will take a piece of mine when they leave. And I’ll cry and I’ll ache and I’ll dream and I’ll bring out the glue pot and the red paper and cut myself a bigger heart this time, so there’s more of it left when another one leaves.

I know that my heart lies open some days when I see all the world huge like beauty. I know that my heart gets small and leaves me some days, when I anger and rage and leave hard footprints on the floor. And I know my heart weeps sometimes in my sleep because my pillow lies wet in the morning.

September 14, 2001

Written at Natalie Goldberg's workshop at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, BC