There is a large heart set before me, behind it a vast plain. The plain is empty, vacant, a blooming shrub here or a hurried creature there. The night is dark reddish, deep purple clouds hang low in the sky, they intertwine with the wet fog and I can’t tell one from the other. Just under the darkest part of the sky there is a clearing --- a white band stretching from east to west, as far as I can see. Its ever so subtle, perhaps the dawning of a new day.
I’ve never seen a heart before. Here it sits, much larger than I imagined, beating ever so slowly. There must be a hundred holes poked in that heart, every size, from every angle. But somehow it continues beating. Every once in awhile I see a tiny creature pop up out of one
of the largest holes. It seems they’ve taken up a home there. They are small and unrecognizable, they scamper around busy about their own business. The story of how the heart got this way is playing over the rusty outdated loudspeakers ---- the sound is scratchy at best. There is a sad tune to match the sadder story. The sound is not clear but that’s ok, I know the story.
I keep coming back to the size of this. Nothing about it is healthy or beautiful. It is tired, it beats almost like it wants to give up. It has a rhythm but the rhythm is oh so blue and depressed. Perhaps this heart’s foot was caught in the strap of a wild stallion loose and crashing through the landscape. It must have bounced along the dirt road skipping over the roots and rocks jutting from the ground. Its covered in dust and brush. Or perhaps it was trampled under a thousand feet like a wet article on the subway steps -- it slides a step or two as the tramplers elbow one another to race to their destination. The words and numbers, once so clear, are no longer legible. It has no destination, no purpose now, only as good as a doormat.
