I carry my heart in a chest
that has known both thunder and silence—
sometimes I wonder how it still beats
after all the storms it’s weathered.
But the heart, you see, is not fragile—
it is made of all the forgotten moments
that once slipped away unnoticed,
of all the quiet prayers whispered in the dark.
It has tasted love in its purest form,
and also in its cruelest disguise—
and still, it has never learned to harden.
It is soft,
but unbreakable,
as the earth beneath our feet.
Sometimes, it drifts like a leaf on a river,
lost in the current of the world,
and I can feel it—
pulled by the gravity of things I cannot control.
I try to hold it steady,
but it wants to dance with the wind,
to follow the moon’s call,
to trust that even in the unknown,
it will be found.
But there are nights when it grows still—
when the silence becomes thick and warm
like the earth’s embrace after a long drought.
And it is in these moments,
when the heart is least burdened,
that I see most clearly
the truth I’ve always known:
The heart does not belong to the world;
it belongs to the one who is brave enough to hold it.
I am the keeper of my own heart—
no one else can guard it
the way I can.
Not with walls or shields,
but with an open hand,
trusting that love’s roots
will grow even through the cracks.
I have learned that the heart does not fear the fall,
for it knows the rising is its truest form.
It holds the memory of every fall
and the strength to rise again,
every time,
over and over.
And though it has known both light and darkness,
it has learned the deepest secret:
That in the balance between the two
is where the truest light is born.
-JL