Heart-Room’s Journey

How spacious now the room of my heart,

its walls not stone but living bark,

porous as a forest breathing dawn,

drawing through their hidden chambers

the pollen of joy, the smoke of grief,

the weathered scent of every hand

that ever lingered at the threshold.

Once it was small.

A shell of vibrations humming,

a cradle carved from first breaths,

where love knew only its own name

and tenderness floated like a Glowing Click Beatle upon still water.

There, the earliest lessons arrived—

a smile warming the windowpanes,

a voice folding light into the corners,

a touch not yet touch, but the promise of touch,

traveling toward me through the corridors of becoming.

As the years gathered, the room expanded.

Its ceilings rose like pipe organ’s lungs.

Its floors deepened into fertile soil.

The heart at its center hung bright as a crimson moon,

suspended by invisible threads of longing,

beating its patient rhythm against the silence of the dark.

Love entered first, barefoot and radiant.

Compassion followed, carrying bowls of water for unseen wounds.

Passion arrived later, draping the walls with banners of flame,

painting the windows in colors too vivid for language—

copper desire, indigo devotion,

the gold-leaf shimmer of forgiveness finally spoken.

Yet...

the heart required little.

No excessive ornament. No chandeliers of infatuation

dangling from temporary ceilings.

Only light.

The steady light of awakening.

The kind that enters quietly through an unguarded crack

and reveals that every scar is merely sunlight

remembering where it once broke through.

Over time, furnishings came and went.

Some were carried away by floods of disappointment.

Others collapsed beneath the weight of expectation.

Certain beloved pieces remained:

a cedar chest of gratitude,

a woven chair of patience,

a table fashioned from all the moments someone chose to stay.

And still…

The room endured.

Its walls bore the fingerprints of living.

Laughter etched bright rivers through the plaster.

Loss carved canyons.

Betrayal left rust-colored stains like storms drying upon stone.

Yet every injury, if tended, became another window.

With age came vigilance.

The keeper of the room learned that

not every visitor should be handed a key.

For some carried frost in their pockets,

others wildfires in their mouths.

The room grew wiser without growing hard.

Like an ancient vineyard, its roots sank deeper,

drawing sweetness from the very layers that suffering had enriched.

The heart learned the seasons.

How caution must walk through winters of abandonment.

How freedom may dance when spring returns.

How summer's abundance can intoxicate.

How autumn teaches the sacred art of release.

And always, at the center, the heart continued its labor—

a red-winged bird striking its breast against eternity,

counting each moment with a soft percussion of existence.

First sound.

Last sound.

The original drum beneath all music.

One day, after the final gathering of light, the room too will grow quiet.

Its walls will loosen their hold upon dust and memory.

Its beams will bow.

Its windows will dim.

The pulse that welcomed life will offer its last bright echo,

and the breath that opened the room will gently close the door.

Then the walls shall erode into starlight.

The stones of sorrow, the timbers of love,

the tapestries of passion and compassion

will dissolve into drifting constellations.

Beyond the room, beyond the heart, a waiting universe will open—

vast fields of galaxies turning like silver blossoms in the dark.

And there, where endings become beginnings,

the room's final fragment of light will fasten itself to some new horizon,

carried onward by the same ancient pulse that first whispered…

Live.