How to mend a broken heart
A list poem
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Special thanks to fellow Alchemist Shelby Donald for suggesting this topic.
One. Whittle a needle to a fine-edged point, until you cannot see the tip. Use a material of strength: horn, tusk, or bone. Your thread may be of cobweb or tiny filaments of moss, translucent green and barely there. As you aim it for the needle’s eye, be patient. This will likely take some years, as it cannot be done by force, but only through the knack of gradual, decelerating grace. Hold the two together, as if you have all the time in the world, as if you have forever. At some point, you will see that the two have become one, a tiny slender lance with a long whisp of a tail. When you’re ready, make the stitches one by one.
Two. Go searching for spare parts. You may have to ask around for what you need, but broken hearts are fairly common, so you’ll find plenty of supplies. Some shops have baskets full of tiny springs and disks and gears, others interlocking rings. You’ll find dealers of microscopic straps and splints, atomic wires, mycelia, bacteria, and microorganisms cultivated for this task. Some hearts are mended with a joke, others with routine, distraction, or an atmospheric pressure change. You might need a certain type of feather, or a fine mesh sieve for the ache to seep through. Experiment until you get your heart working again.
Three. Carry it around on your sleeve, wrapped thickly in a layer of oak leaves and imagination, so that it may absorb the gentle therapy of light and sound as you travel through the world, through the woods, through dinner parties, symphonies and squalls. Even a walk along a city street can ease something into the right spot by chance. Don’t be deterred by the swish of cars, the whirs and beeps and grindings of construction sites and yaps of little dogs. It’s the rhythm of it all that mends, a spell of repetition.
Four. Leave it alone for a while. Hearts are self-healing, after all, and it may simply need some space, some solitude, some time alone to breath in the velvet dark.
Five. Purify it with your grief. Stay up all night reading poetry and nursery rhymes and stories of a mysterious unknown continent. Patch the injury with a slip of shadow or a flower petal. Fill the void with dew or starlight. Seal it up with honey. Each of these has healing properties that last an eternity, at least.
Six. Take it to a healer. There are those whose specialize in this sort of thing, whose hearts have themselves been broken and mended so many times that they have become living works of art, fine gold strands pulsing in the fierce red muscle as though they had grown that way all along, and perhaps they did. I don’t know what happens when they place their glowing hands against your bare chest, mouthing words of adoration, but you will know the magic when you feel it, and it will know you.
Seven. Hug a friend. Cliché, perhaps, but it does help.
Eight. Find the crack. What’s broken is not always obvious on the surface. Where is your heart sensitive? Where has it gone numb? The effect of pale light filtering through the seam might be so beautiful that you fall in love with the ragged edge where it lies open and exposed. Love can be its own form of mending, can make a broken thing seem perfect after all.
The thoughtfulness and sensitive approach to the subject was evident throughout the poem. It made me delve deep into the intricate chemistry of my mind.