To Exist Safely

Today at DVerse, we have prosery again. This is usually very difficult for me, so I rarely try it, but this week I want to try. 🙂 However, the given line, from Rilke, is challenging: “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?” – from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Heartbeat.” I am also sharing this with yesterday’s Writers’ Pantry at PSU. I usually don’t share anything other than poems, so this should be fun.

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There is something inside that must be spoken, before it eats its way out of its cage inside of her mind. She tries to find the words to express her secret, but with difficulty, for she can barely get any words out without shaking. She trips over those words, like stones in her path to freedom. Even the words that escape the prison of her lips do not seem to express fully what she means to say. Sadly she realizes, “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?”

Continuing to tremble, as if trying to shake off the chains of the past, she hugs herself and feels the beat of her own heart in the center of her chest. It is the life inside of her, which is close and which has its own, wordless song. She takes a deep breath in and begins to speak again.

 

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