A Poem: This Heart

My heart is like the onion’s skin
shedding layers with the breaking.
My heart is pressed as the garlic bulb
until it releases its scent.

Yes, my heart is a growing thing
that pushes beyond its restraints.
The shell must give yet
a thousand times
for this heart to expand.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
October 2018

‘The heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.’
-from “The Testing-Tree” by Stanley Kunitz

‘Let your heart break daily.
In conversation.
Over song lyrics.
During the pause right before the sunrise.
While you’re sipping coffee + looking
into the eyes of someone
talking about something they love.
For its when we break a little– we come alive.
It’s in this space of feeling
we get to expand.
And it’s here
in our vulnerability and openness,
we step into our greatest selves’

– Danielle Doby