There once was a girl who kept her heart in a box.
She met a man and wanted to show him her heart. She opened the box, and took out her heart, piece by piece, laying it on the floor for him to see.
You see, another man had once broken her heart so she carefully wrapped each piece away in the box and hid it away in the attic.
The man sat on the floor with the pieces. He picked each piece up carefully and gently, running his fingers along the scars, stroking the parts that were still bruised, and then placed each piece next to his own heart.
The girl smiled and had never felt happier.
Slowly but surely the pieces of her heart grew redder and healthier, the bruises faded, and the pieces that had been separate for so long began stitching themselves back together.
This happened each time the man came and held the girls heart near his.
The girl became braver and started showing the man other boxes. Some were full of darkness and covered in dust and cob webs that she had kept hidden for many years. Ashamed and scared for what people would think.
She sat on the floor with the man and opened each box in turn.
The man gently brushed away the dust and the dirt. He touched everything in the box, polishing it with the sleeve of his jumper and turning it over gently in in his hands. He never looked away.
Other boxes were full of light and memories from many years ago that had been locked away. For it made the girl too sad to look at them.
The man looked in all these boxes and smiled. He looked at the girl and told her he loved the darkness as much as the light, and so should she.
The girl’s heart slowly became whole again. It no longer needed to be kept in the box. It went with the girl wherever she went.
From time to time the girl gave the man her heart to hold. He took it to beautiful places the girl had never seen, he told her stories, wrote her letters, and kissed her heart like no one had ever done before.
The girl and her heart were happy. The girl was no longer cold and her fear disappeared like dust in the wind.
Then one day the man stopped sitting on the floor with her. He said it was uncomfortable and dusty.
The man no longer seemed interested in the boxes. The girl panicked and started trying to find other boxes in the attic. Brighter, more interesting and more exciting boxes but the man just looked away.
Her heart now lay in the box, growing pale and bruised.
Then one day the man stopped coming.
The girl closed the boxes full of darkness and light back up again, and hid them away.
She then went to her heart, and found it in pieces on the floor where the man had left it. The bruises were blacker than they had ever been before and where the stitches had come undone there was blood seeping into the floorboards. The heart was barely beating.
The girl gathered up her broken heart into her lap, slowly wrapping each piece of it up. Gently so not to hurt and damage it even more. She placed the broken pieces of her heart into the box and locked it away. High on a shelf in the attic where she could forget.
The months went by and the girl slowly began to forget about her heart and the box in which it lived.
The girl still thought about the man. The man who had once loved the darkness and the light but in the end had left her heart in pieces on the floor. It was only then that she felt an ache in her chest and remembered her heart in the box, now crying quietly in the darkness.
The darkness grew and the dust on the boxes got thicker. The girl got older and sadder and hardly thought of the boxes anymore. The man was a mere dream the girl told herself. Nothing more.
Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash
Emily Algar
Emily Frances Algar is a journalist and writer. She has experience in the music industry working as the A&R on the Grammy Nominated Album (Best Folk Album) Front Porch by artist Joy Williams. Emily has been published in a number of print and digital publications including Atwood Magazine, American Songwriter, and Record Collector magazine. She specializes in both long and short-form features as well as interviews and reviews. She has written pieces ranging from the commercialization of feminism and feminism in popular culture, critiques surrounding freedom of speech and the #MeToo movement as well as recently interviewing refugees from Iran. Emily has a Masters in International Security from Oxford Brookes University. Her thesis looked at the extent to which the media shaped public opinion during the Vietnam and Iraq (2003) wars.
