Think back to that time
when you held out
your beating heart
in your two cupped hands,
your little girl/little boy eyes
bright with hope or tears,
and said, "I need"--
that time when you found
your heart was better
kept behind the bars
of your ribs, the shield
of your breast bone--
that time when you learned,
or the next time, or the next,
when you reviewed the lesson,
when you concluded
the answer was to take . . .
or maybe just to give.
Remember that?
But now there's this Man
with the scarred hands
who bends, smiling, to whisper,
"Ask."
when you held out
your beating heart
in your two cupped hands,
your little girl/little boy eyes
bright with hope or tears,
and said, "I need"--
that time when you found
your heart was better
kept behind the bars
of your ribs, the shield
of your breast bone--
that time when you learned,
or the next time, or the next,
when you reviewed the lesson,
when you concluded
the answer was to take . . .
or maybe just to give.
Remember that?
But now there's this Man
with the scarred hands
who bends, smiling, to whisper,
"Ask."
This is so personal, I didn't comment the first time I read it; when you posted it. Remembering painful lessons is not what I like to do. Yes, the ribs are there to protect our hearts; but behind bars? The little boy in me doesn't know what to do with this poem.
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