A Kaleidoscope of Hearts

Dear you,

If this letter's aspect resembled its content, it would be a kaleidoscope. All the letters reflecting light in a different way and clinkclinkclinking in a waterfall of verses to form any of the shapes a human heart can have, cracking apart only to pull themselves together fractions of a second afterwards into a more complex, rich, pulsing version.

And if I could stop and pick each of them like cards from a deck, I would ask you of all the hearts you have created for yourself and the memories that, sewn in the insides of each of them, still affect me today.

I have so many doubts, dear you. I wish I were still at an age when drawing hearts to substitute  my own worked in keeping it safe from harm, safe from pain. Even if so many of them were broken, stolen, or lost and never found their way back; even if you gave a few away and were given a few that you didn't really care about, even if some flicker by so fast that I can't remember what they looked like after they're gone, fleeting and ephemeral like a scent in the air that is unrecognizable yet familiar... even so, I miss that age that used to be ours and now is just yours to live again and again.

In your first memories I could see you wear your heart proudly on your chest like a jewel, and back then it had the colour of corn fields in the Summer and shimmered faintly as the surface of the River in the early afternoons. Its shape was irregular and you broke your pencils' tips a couple of times from carving the colours so hard on the paper,  because that's the intensity of a child's feelings. And this heart had a big smiling mouth for your frequent chattering, round glasses - if only you had known they'd be so fashionable later on, thanks to a certain young wizard!- and an eye covered, like only a true pirate has.

That heart got stolen pretty easily, by catchy songs and piano keys, which sweetly wrapped its tiny features in pentagrams that spoke of faraway lands to explore together. Like seasons make the colour of corn fields change and darker weather the shimmer on the River disappear, they escaped together before you noticed.

But to not leave our readers thinking these notes and songs to be real pricks, I must say you had been preparing a new heart by then, and they were merely making space for it.

Your taste for bright colours, in fact, didn't last long; the hue of starry nights and Winter flowers stained your heart like blotches of ink. Or is it simply that darker colours are those that cover blood more easily? An older age gives no answers, it only bends memories enough to make even those questions look uncertain.

I think you tried to throw that heart away a number of times, tired of its legacy, but the road to its memories is carved - deep or otherwise- in all of the hearts that came to be.  There is a story in those scars; I could borrow a blind person's fingertips and their knowledge of Braille would be able to read through the camouflage you covered these scars with... and I would hear about closed doors, about blood and guilt. Blood has always been the colour of your guilt, after all, and a cloak for those memories.

And then for many, many hearts to come, your hearts' colours and shapes were constant: as if in hibernation. But let me tell you, sweet you, that any heart needs warmth to live, and those that withered and were lost hurt more than the ones that remained within you.

But maybe all of these hearts that you lost taught you more than anything else could have. I wonder if you'd have found a balance sooner, had you not looked for it on your own only. I ask myself how much pain you could have spared yourself.

However, I see what your hearts slowly turned themselves into and often I wonder if they would have become this something I've come to cherish, without all of those past hearts to contribute to the present one.

I see your hearts growing stronger, lasting longer. A bit solitary, perhaps, but solitude and loneliness are such different terms; a bit essential in their design, but I'm sure there's a whole lot of that camouflage covering them; a bit weird in their shapes, but everyone needs their time to learn to draw again.

And I see my heart now, the heart you handed to me that day and that I've held on to until today. It still likes wearing a cloak of guilt at times, I won't deny; I'm still skilled at that camouflage thing, and I haven't still learned to take my own advice - which I don't think I mentioned before, but you're the queen of that. Seriously.

I wish I could borrow your strength sometimes, because I don't always feel like this heart of mine has enough of that; but I know you doubted yourself of this same thing back then, too, so maybe I'm just being silly - like you were. Maybe I'll always be.

I wish I could tell you of all that will happen, I wish I could open this kaleidoscope without ruining it, so I could slip in between your hearts an additional one, that might teach you a few things that would definitely have helped you when dealing with the dark side; and if I could do that, maybe neither me nor the one who all of my hearts belong to would need to suffer like this.

But whenever I think that this heart of mine is a bit too weak I also think it's not only made of you and me, but of him, too. It's a heart worth keeping, you know?

So maybe this is the only message my heart needs to speak to your kaleidoscope of hearts: forsake nothing.