LITTLE TIN HEARTS

When I first met you it was though I had stumbled into the picture of a wonderland life.  Everything that appeared as it was supposed to be and everything in its place.  Perfect from the outside in every detail. Smiles for everyone and envy from the outside world for all that you seemed to have and possess. Charming. Utterly charming.  I wandered into this immense house and, inside a small closet, tucked away in the corner, and of almost no consequence whatsoever, I found a heart.

     It was a little tin heart.  So small and so fragile.  It had been left in the corner,crumpled and its paint dull. Dust had collected over the top of it as though no one had paid attention to it in years. And they hadn't. It was completely empty. Like an old Christmas ornament that was nice enough to keep, but not worth repairing or replacing and certainly not hanging on the tree for what it meant. Dented, and then filled from something within itself, but never from those who had caused it.

 So much like my own.

     Why it had been left in a closet as an obvious possession, and still so neglected and inconsequential  was beyond me, but I made it my goal in life to return it to what it once was.  I knew what it was supposed to look like, and while I have not been very good at having people take care of mine, I knew this one could be fixed.

     I took it home with me and went about taking the dents back out of it.  Straightening its small delicate curves and subtle faces until it was capable of holding so much more than it once had.   I buffed the outside until it shone with the light of a thousand suns and then I gilded it and reinforced its edges to withstand what I intended to put inside of it.  When it was complete, I painted it back to its lustrous shine and went about filling it. I had found it when it was not wanted, remade it when it was considered not worth fixing, let alone even noticing, and protected it when it was of little more than crumpled tin to anyone else. It was to be kept.

     Fixing hearts is not as easy as it seems.  Some hearts have become accustomed to what assails them and resist any desire to mend them.  But as long as you are slow and careful with them, and everything you do is conscious and honest, it will begin to look as though the worst parts repair themselves.  As long as the pieces you use are the very best that it deserves, there is no failing in mending a heart.  And this heart was one of those very rare ones.  A heart that, for all of its simplicity, had wrapped its fears and injuries within its internal workings so as to believe they needed to be there in order for it to exist at all. As though compassion required the component of corrosion, and tense anxiety was what defined the motion of clockwork springs and gears.  A heart like this, once it is repaired, can be the type of thing only miracles are made of, come from, and it takes miracles to repair it as well.

     Now hearts can be filled with anything, and self sacrificing hearts have more shoved into them with the sense of responsibility and duty more than with love. Anger,resentment, loneliness, apathy. Sadly the greatest thing it is usually filled with is fear.  But this one I filled with my very soul, and the weight of it, once it was filled would be much too heavy for any man with more selfish  intentions could bear to lift.  I left no room in it for anything else, and when it was finished, wrapped  my hands around it and protected it as a prize beyond worth.  A treasure for which I would give my very life for. Truly PRICELESS.  It was THAT important.  It was important because in returning that heart back to what it was capable of holding, I  refilled mine as well.  My heart filled with my own soul and the promise that it belonged only to one person, and one alone.

     Before I left, I covered the heart  with letters and wishes, of small kisses and promises, and confirmations of its worth and protection in spite of anything that lay before it or me.  Nothing would befall this heart, and as long as it was filled with my soul there was no room in it for anything less. Before I left I knew it to be impenetrable.  Over time the small reinforcements became a chest to hold it within.  The key to what lay inside is in only two places.  In your will to let it out, and around my neck to open it when I returned.  Its key is still around my neck and I would have never removed it.



     Every day that I spend without it is a day that I remember how badly I needed it and how solemnly I swore to protect it.  And not a single day goes by that I do not believe with all my soul that he believes he has stolen back from me what is no longer, nor has ever been,  his right to say he owns. The belief that it can be "owned' at all is enough to question the right to  hold it at all.

     He left it alone long enough for someone else to find and reopen its worth, and all the regrets in the world that he has, are not enough for me to willingly accept he has any idea of how to protect it any more now than he ever did.  Not  then, not now, not ever.  Even if he could, what right does he have now to take it for himself when all I ever did was make it everything it could be?  Have I ever done anything less to deserve it?

     And so there the heart sits, filled with both my soul AND another, and a blackened, resentful fist keeps it.  This is not what is fair for hearts repaired by men who know their worth.

     Neglect the little  hearts of the world if you so desire, but there are those who are more than willing to seek what is only thought of as crumpled tin, and while you may be able to dent them again and again, and to leave them to collect years of dust from neglect, rebuilt hearts, with reinvented clockwork springs, will beat for years longer than you can imagine.