Speaking of Matters with the Heart

"Do you remember Patrick?" my heart asks me. Yes, I reply, It's not like it was that long ago. "Do you remember how he hurt me?" No, I can't remember that, at least not the hurt. I remember you were crying for a long time, but it seems as if I wasn't there. "Do you remember Chad?" Yes, I remember him and your hurt.

"Do you remember Robert?" I pause at his name, my heart has grabbed me by the lungs and asked me to listen now. "Do you remember how he hurt us?" I try to suppress the order my heart has sent my mind. Like the little ticker he is, my mind rifles through the dusty cards, stacked in endless drawers, crumbling with the weight of time. From those stacks, he pulls the card with Robert's name on it, but it is not dusty at all; it is fresh with crisp corners and a single imprint: An image of his mouth, smiling, large, the gap between his teeth doing all the laughing his mouth cannot. "Here it is," my mind grumbles, as he drags his heavy body to my heart and gives her the card. Oh, is all I can whisper, for my heart still holds my breath in her grasp. She has heard my thoughts on this matter, and I thought that I had left it to the wind, but my heart disagrees now. "You spent a single night with this man. That single night is still worth more than..." Than what? "I don't know, more than... well what does that matter? You and I both know about that night." I know about that night, and I know about the next two months, those months in which I had no idea what I was supposed to feel. He never came to me. He never wanted me. "That's untrue, he wanted you just the same as you wanted him, but he is a man, with manly duties, calling him to all corners of the world, doing what is asked of him..." How do you know that? You put a shine on any story, how can I trust you? "Because I am yours, I would not betray you as you think Robert has. I cannot live without you, nor can you without me.  Once removed, you stop. Without your mind you can live as well as you please, or at least like a vegetable, but without me you die. So you can do nothing, in the end, but trust me." What are you asking of me? "I am asking only this; give Robert the second chance he asks for."

But I am cold to him. I cannot be where I was such little time ago. I cannot place my heart in his hands, again, because when I did, I died. It was a cruel death. My heart was away from me for so long, without a single word on how she was doing. The pining of my body for my heart I felt. I only wanted it back and to feel her warmth again, but he waited too long - my mind did. My mind did not search for her until he thought it was safe to go out. He was wrong to do so. The cavity in my chest grew smaller and colder, without her or her warmth, and now she has a cold, and longs to be warm again. She saw herself with Robert, she saw the happiness she was not just witness to, but testament,  not the sadness that filled my mind. My mind is bitter now. You saw the way he picked up the card? No? He picked it up with such austere movements, but I saw the moment he gasped, for I gasped, too.  Now my heart is back in my hands and I must find warmth for her, she feels what my mind did not, and cannot. I miss that feeling, but I am here, my mind is still numb, and my heart seems to think that Robert is the answer. The answer remains lost to me.