Oh my heart breaks - WWE - Wednesday Writing Essentials

Oh my heart breaks and is about to pop. I cannot give my heart; I am afraid.  On this morn, this early November morn, I am afraid; outside,  soft evergreens fill my nostrils with balsam as I clutch to my face my cotton sheets, still warm from the dryer -- the crisp, white sheets that smell like a summer day, cliched as it sounds -- but it is true. But my heart breaks, my emotions run to the surface and are about to spill over like tears over-wellling from a child denied candy, like the bathtub run too long without supervision; yes, my heart breaks, for I know I must risk it. Yet I cannot. But I must. This is the conundrum which I now face. Focus. I tell myself. Rise up, go forth, pull yourself up by your boot-strings. Wise words from the ancients do not inspire me. I must find a different path. The conflagration in the outposts, the battles in the East, the fights in the South, North or West, or the lives lost in these very real wars we are in seem to pale before the very real fear of needing to face my heart. I am frozen with fear and tears are about to spill over. Hamlet's central problem: 'He who hesitates is lost', has always driven me to run and keep running, no matter the cost. The cost was that my heart hardened, like taffy pulled too long, and has hardened into hard tack, a brittle sweet that shatters easily.  On the other side, where I am frozen in place, as I am in my nightmares, I am stuck in one place with my mouth open in a silent scream as I will my arms and legs to move, but to no avail.  None of that works anymore for me. Long ago, I gave up on love, knowing its lure and its fangs. But on this early November morn, as the pines whisper to me and the tri-color Maples flap their lips to me, I know what I must do: I must enter the 'land of the free and the home of the brave.'  And so I clutch my sheets, let my tears run freely, and run outside,  as I chase the whispering pines, ready to embrace love's lure and  to accept love's fangs. Play ball!

***

This is fiction, but is a conundrum my character faces. As do we all. It is called the human condition.  And now PLAY BALL!  For me, that is WRITE ON!

Prompt for Susan's WWE - due by Nov 11th -

• Include major world conflict as a theme or mere mention or something in between
• Something needs to =pop=
• Use the word focus
• Include a line from a National Anthem (any country)
• Optional--a famous person must appear in the article
• tag with wwe