Heart Help

Portals to our Hearts

In this space, I have placed mostly poems that have become portals into my heart at times when I needed some heart help. I offer them here in the hopes that they may be those kinds of portals for you as well.

Meant for Love and Beauty

The Rev. Theresa Soto

I need you to know
that there is nothing
wrong with you, if you
find the world congealed
and unwieldy. You were
never meant to serve money,
to give loyalty to unprincipled
power, to spend your joy
frantically soothing yourself
in order to tend wounds
of being constantly
dehumanized. I need you
to know that your sense
of injury and anger is not
overdeveloped. You are meant
for love and beauty. You belong
where you are known and
where your future is not just a
resource, but a promise, which
you begin to fulfill by being
unmistakably, irrevocably
yourself.
--you are not wrong.

essence underneath

Ophir Haberer

I know that look so well.

The look of confusion,
the skimming of my face.

And yet, I'm so tired of
explaining.

Trying to make you
digest me.

Trying to contextualize
myself
& failing
over &
over
again.

See my heart.
See my essence.

Do not
try to assume
the impossible
task of boxing me
into something
I am not
and will never be.

And the hardest part
is that you don't even recognize
you're doing it.

Yet,
there is a part of me
so deeply
grateful

for all your years of not seeing me.

When I finally surrendered to it,
I found the liberation of being the other;

of not fitting the perceived
image
of what it means to be
part of the club,

of wearing a different
colored
skin.

And from that place,
I was able to see and continue to see

all those beautiful, resilient souls,
that live day to day
day to day
unnoticed and unseen.

And I will choose to see
their essence
beyond
the shitty
boxes
you've laid out
for them.

This is the title poem in Ophir's book, the Essence Underneath.