Sculptress

Hands just smaller than a deck of cards, and they could break stone, move mountains and uncover love where only ice used to dwell. She wiggles her fingers to melt glaciers. A curious sensation radiates from just under my breastbone, a blood-warm bow shock racing ahead of the calving bergs of my heart.

Her hands, those soft chisels, are running through the sand in front of us. She is giggling. The sound makes me laugh and swoon simultaneously. So absorbed in the task of finding sand dollars and crab shells, the artist is oblivious to the meltwater gathering in the corners of my eyes. Those hands. Beauty created and creator, like that Escher drawing of two hands opposed, each drawing the other.

I muse to myself: is she drawing my heart, filling the void I had carried so long like a geode that had never been opened? Or was she chiseling away the gray-white stone around it, long buried under calciferous strata of ossified love and life? Hope flares up, I wonder if the stone of my heart still carried a molten core. The warm waves pulse and multiply. She looks up at me and smiles.

Plate shift. The fault slips, the halves of my heart groan and scrape with the release of tectonic energy. The warmth in my chest threatens to overwhelm me. I laugh nervously fearing that if I do open my mouth, lava will pour forth rather than the words I really want to speak. I peer into pale blue diamond eyes as the sculptress holds up her treasure, a sand dollar worn smooth by the affections of countless eager children.

"Daddy, I found a shell!" Enthusiasm beams from an angel face that quickly turns its attentions back to the touch and explore display to find more shells. "Yes, you did, sweet pea!" I reply, watching those alabaster hands sift through the sand.

The hammer rises, an iron-grey blur landing with the sound of a bell on the head of the chisel. The stone splits wide, jagged halves falling away. The sculptress laughs, all soft chimes and sugar. Her hands cradle my new-born heart, gently brushing off the sand as she holds it up to the light.

I wipe the liquid prisms from my eyes, love warming in the hands of the sculptress.