To Grow a Heart

Before a person grows a heart,

They will find themselves falling softly through the fathomless dark,with no hands to hold the world and no heart in the hollow of their chest.Around them, the black water breathes, slow and soundless, beneath an endless sky.

Behind them drifts small black creatures, quiet as formless dreams in sleep,while purple jellyfish float near, their petals pulsing with tender light.Potently pink, they pass like little lanterns in the gentle deep.

The person will fall through forests of green and cities glowing gold at dusk,through rain resting lightly on leaves,through laughter carried from open windows,through lover’s hands and children's voices and the rest of the warm, worn world.

And slowly, out the empty, sterile place from whence they camethere will grow a small and secret ache, a yearning,for every beautiful thing in the world that is fleeting,and every fleeting thing that is given to the world.

So the person will keep falling, held softly by the humming sea,until the purple lights gather close and the darkness opens like a door—and somewhere beyond the black, they will findthat a heart has begun to beat.