“In the end / I want my heart / to be covered in stretch marks.” —Andrea Gibson

We are a generation of hyperboles. Big, bigger, biggest - brobdingnagian! Great, greater greatest - gigantuous! Huge, huger, hugest - humongous!


Our exclamations have gotten bigger

To fit the expanding of our wandering heart.



"There's nothing uglier than the first week of school handwriting."

"It was, literally, the largest sandwich in existence."

"I think I'm going to die if I hear her talk one more time."



There are poems about

How a wanderlusting heart would travel millions of miles in her sleep

Crawl through the oceans of her dreams

Break her bones to dust, shed her skin as she spirals against gravity

To reach the face of the moon where her lovers kiss awaits


There are love songs about

How he would burn

Against a hundred blazing suns

Against the objections of a thousand

Against a million miles of separation,

Combust as he tears and pulls at the layers of atmosphere

To reach the soil of the earth where his lovers feet have planted

Even if he himself were burnt to ashes




An awakening has begun -

Hearts are expanding, trying to grasp the edges of something greater

Trying to tug glory they do not know down to earthly limits

Trying to heighten itself to

Satisfaction?

Nirvana?

The highest level of being?

I think the answer is

A hyperbole of the soul.




I want to transfer my love

Into hyperbolic expressions of love for Love Himself -

Spread my heart out so big

So wide, embrace beauty in the big

The small, the dirty, the broken

Want to love stars heading for black holes back into existence



I want to transform my hyperbolic exclamations of delight in this world

Into a whirling tornado of exaltation for the Exalted

Into every single raindrop that touches the face of the earth, worship

Into the very vibrations of my soundbox, praise

Into my heart,

Truth.



“In the end
I want my heart
to be covered in stretch marks.”