Visiting the Heart

During heavy hours ticking slowly past midnight, I sometimes wander about the corridors of my heart.

It’s a complicated place.

There are rooms filled with childhood memories.  Happy places. 
I can’t help but smile whenever I enter.

Rooms filled with friends.  Most rather magnificent.  I visit often, almost daily. 

There are rooms filled with ambitions.  Dusty now. 

Rooms filled with hopes.  Rarely visited.

And there’s a room filled with memories totaling nearly half my life. 

I crack the door open every now and then.

And recoil.

There’s treasure there.  I remember it well.  Just one step forward, though, and there’s pain.  

The floor is littered with glass shards and razors.  Knives and spilled blood. 

If only I could find a way to sweep the agonies away, to drown them in an abyssal sea.

I don’t know how to do that.

There’s treasure there, just two steps away.

And an old Chinese saying: “One can’t cross a chasm in two steps.”

There’s a chamber in my heart that beckons me to visit. 

And a door latch that kills.

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