A Life-Long Friend Who Knows Me

I draw a heart in the white sand. I sit for the longest time looking at it.

I am lost in confusion. I am stuck in the visio. My heart is open, in plain view for the naked eye. Yet so many people cannot see it, don't believe it. They see what they fear. They see what other hearts have held or haven’t. They see only another heart that can’t be trusted, another heart that will fail.

I brush a tear from my eye. I brush away the sand heart that I have drawn.

I look at the sand. It seems empty. Heartless. I think about how the world needs more love, compassion and forgiveness. I keep staring at the empty space where the heartful of feeling once was, wondering at the folks who have conception of what that is.

A woman comes up beside me. Without a word, she sits. She picks up stick and draws an open heart again, right where I did. It takes over the view before my eyes. It's a symbol, a reality.

“It looks like you,” she says, though she stare out at the water.
I look over to see is a life-long friend who knows me.

−me strauss Letting me be