One heart

One heart beating, two hearts drumming, the little boy who lost his one heart’s delight, bearing a drum to the silken sea who took his heart and then spat it back each morning with bleached shells. The new shorelines were surprised to find themselves front and center as beachfront. They tried on their new coral sand gowns as the sea lapped at the hem of the coastline, mirroring their frothy beauty. The little boy couldn’t stop drumming. Each morning the reporter found him playing his solo concert to the sea.soon he noticed that the sea answered the little drummer with a cease-surcease. The boy was so absorbed he forgot about the pain in his heart. He drummed and the sea answered. There was a strange beauty to the sea, and the color of sky, so blue, but something more. He drummed for the mother who came down to the strand each morning to collect the gift of children’s shoes the sea had returned in the night. He drummed for the toothless old man hunkered down on his haunches, collecting shells and broken bits of coral. The boy couldn’t believe his sister and mother were gone in a heartbeat. Not until his father took him to their graves. But they were empty, so he still held out hope. He gathered the piles of shells and coral the old man had left behind and outlined their graves in the shape of one heart. They said that two sisters were buried in the same coffin, and his mother in another. He outlined their empty graves in the shape of one heart. Like after 9/11, everything was post 9/11. After the tsunami, everything is post tsunami. Gaia, Gaia, Gaia. The one heart of the earth beating to the drum line.

1/7/2005 Writers’ Group