I used to think that my heart could only exist in my body.

Where I went, my heart went. It was as much a fixed part of my anatomy as the eyes on my face.

I see clearly that I was wrong.

Fragments of my heart live outside my body. This heart of mine, broken in the best and worst of ways, by

love and pain

hills and valleys

beauty and decrepitude

This heart lives in a sunset overlook on a crisp November evening. In the homeless woman on the exit ramp, in the pouring rain. In that first kiss, under the stars. In my childhood dog’s final shallow breath. In the waiting room of the doctor’s office. In the quiet, sacred moments after the first “I love you.” In a joke about seagulls that really wasn’t *that* funny. In lost Oakleys and coconut rum on a boat. In exploded oatmeal. In a flicker of hope in a dark void. The first time I looked back at myself in the mirror and thought, “She is so beautiful.” Behind the curtain, immediately after the final bow of the final show. In a sideways glance that says all I could ever need to know.

Parts of my heart, I carry still: the pieces that have not yet found a home. But it is not whole. And that means I am living – not just alive. I aspire to arrive at the end of my days with no heart left in my body, because I have given every last sliver of it away. To be broken, distributed, infinite; in the most beautiful of ways.