it's just how i see things

so much held in a heart in a lifetime.
so much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment.
we are utterly open with no one, in the end—
not mother and
father,
not wife or husband,
not
lover,
not
child,
not
friend.
we open windows to each but we live
alone
in the house of the heart.
perhaps we must.
perhaps we could not bear to be so naked,
for fear of a constantly harrowed heart.
when young we think there will come one person
who will savor and sustain us always;
when we are older we know this is the dream of a child,
that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred,
scored and torn,
repaired by time and will,
patched by force of character,
yet fragile and rickety forevermore,
no matter how ferocious the defense
and how many bricks you bring to the wall.
you can brick up your heart as stout and tight
and hard and cold and impregnable
as you possibly can
and down it comes in an instant,
felled by a woman's second glance,
a child's apple breath,
the shatter of glass in the road,
the words I have something to tell you,
a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die,
the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand
in a thicket of your hair,
the memory of your
father's
voice early in the morning
echoing from the kitchen
where he is making pancakes for his children.

{from joyas voladoras}