Strings of my Heart

Change

Friday, October 17, 2025

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Some vestige of me lies dormant, but I don't think I'll be able to coerce it out anymore as though it were an old dog, and I could merely dangle a piece of meat in front of it. Where this part of me was once active and compelling, I find it quiet and submissive.

It's like I'm leaving something behind, but I wasn't the one who decided to leave it. I've noticed the effects of whatever thing's departure from me before, but I cannot decide whether it was more like a parasite, or more like a quality.

It's like a slow drum of rain might wash me away.

For example, beauty seems to have little sway over me, and its allure is no longer a roaring tide. I can acknowledge my attraction toward a few others, what little of it there is, but it's nothing more than a breath in the wind. Where beauty once stunned me—enraptured me—it's just a brief flash of light in a long chasm of darkness, a small stroke of color on a black and white canvas.

It's almost as if I'd prefer to hold onto this feeling that swayed me so, though I know it's of little use, and neither white knuckles nor persistent wishes will draw it back to me. This much, I know to be true.

Something beneath the strings of my heart craves to expel the way I feel, but I imagine it would mean very little to me, and even less to those who would hear it. Even after the strongest of men stoop, and the brightest of stars grows dark, I doubt I'll be able to find someone whose sentiments for me outweighs their disinterest.

Though there are many days when I wish I could shout and cry, rage and lust, and lament so the very heavens might hear me, a piece of me has been replaced by a soundless intention that urges me to find the company of those who would make me feel more like myself.

So there is no doubt; a part of me is missing. Despite I used to toil at its disappearance like I was some kind of emotional tyrant, I find shy reluctance in brushing it aside. I am but one man! That is not lost on me! And my heart is and always has been but a doormat for others to scrape their heels—except for only a stark few.

I suppose I can now see a reason as to why many people rely on their romantic counterparts for a sense of passion and vigor. But it's in this moment I get the subtle inclination that perhaps romanticism, beauty, allure, and attraction were never meant for someone like me.

So I think I had forgotten the silence of being alone. I could never forget the invisibility of it, but the silence is something else entirely, and I suspect God would like to remind me.

Not even sex nor lust desire nor passion pull at the strings of my heart;

If only my heart weren't quite so fragile,

I wouldn't feel so split apart.

Sometimes I wish I could remember the sweetest of allures,

Of women and bodies and skin and nerves;

But it seems as though all has drifted into the dimly lit obscure.

If I could but reach out and once again seize -

that which used to impassion me,

Perhaps I could bide my time.

But something's been taken from me—something now resting in the dark;

In return for me through tenfold grief and lingering scars,

It's left only a thin glass line.

So now I lie and wait for something besides exalting -

Sensations and chills and all the fleeting pleasures.

I only wish to feel at home.

Whether I find it through a person a place or a thing,

Then perhaps life wouldn't be so monochrome.