Bowl of the Heart
if he had asked for
a bowl of soup
or sandwich
I would have known what to do
<>
but he told me
his heart was empty
hollow
he put my hand over his heart
the beat had no echo
wasn’t I the one
to fill that empty heart
<>
I told him
only you can fill that heart
he was crying
I pushed him away
this wasn’t coldness
but the realization
I couldn’t let kindness
mislead him
into thinking there was
hope for more
<>
the soup bowl I could fill
the bowl of a heart
was too sacred
As the song says ‘a kiss is just a kiss’ yet many of us, myself at one time, saw it the opening notes of a lifetime of love. Casual gestures become loaded symbols, beacons of hope & are no longer gestures. In the mists of my on-line past I was contacted by a guy who started with ‘How are you today?’ I replied with ‘Fine’, out of politeness. His next post was ‘what are you into?’. To which I used the site’s standard reply ‘we’re not a good match’ to which he promptly replied calling me ‘another one of those time wasters.’
Such is life but it was another reminder of how easily people mislead themselves & then blame others. Just because I don’t argue with you doesn’t mean I agree with you. Just because I’m not rude to you doesn’t mean I’m interested. This is one of those gender free equations – though I have found men are more likely to mislead themselves – many hetero men consider women who don’t respond or who are indifferent to them, to be bitches (or worse).
But I digress, a little :-
There is this theory that everyone is damaged & those that claim not be are in denial. (though there are those whose sense of entitlement take it for granted that it up to you to cater to their damage i.e. Trump). One of results of my recovery journey has been getting to some of roots of my damage & finding that it comes from cultural attitudes, rather than from specific people or incidents.
Like the man with the empty heart here, I was taught other people were responsible for filling that emptiness. This ‘filling’ is basis for every romantic comedy, or melodrama, in which the love the right person was all that was needed, or it was the loss of that love that leads to emotional disaster, violent revenge etc.
Thanks for reading, write comments below, while I make myself a sandwich.
TOpoet 