A Heart For Sale

 "Sale, Sale!" the woman announces boldly as she shakingly pounds the hammer against the stake to secure the red "Sale" sign in the ground. Today she is finally going to do it, it is time. "Sale, sale!" the woman calls out again, "One heart for sale!". There are a few people who pass by, mouths agape in astonishment and then disdain. "A heart for sale?" asks the first prude, for she could not fathom how someone could live without one. Hours pass by and the people all pass by and peer sternly at the red sign, all quickly turning away. But then, a stranger stops. Curiously, he approaches and he asks softly, "why is your heart for sale?"

The woman relentlessly wipes her tears and beckons to the stranger to have a seat. She then says, "if I tell you a story, will you buy it, my heart?" The stranger is intrigued and so he listens. Her father was the first one to discard her heart. He did not care that her heart was still growing, or that her heart's veins and arteries still needed support to do its work. All he cared for was his own heart, and so his words slashed across her veins, wounding them, forcing them wide open, leaving a trail of blood, as he sent her out so early into the world. 

The men who came into her life after her father must have sensed her heart's vulnerability because at sixteen, one of them sniffed her scent of weakness and lured right in. With his trail of trauma and his pervasive ego, he wrenched into her atria and instantly blocked her valves. Open heart surgery indeed. At nights, he used her, but during the day, he claimed to not know her. Her heart felt the most hurt that time, immense pain, compounded wounds, followed by persistent bleeding. 

Then one day, her mother's wretched claws stuck into it, and ghastly ripped it out of her chest and threw it. Discarded. Her heart lay bloodied on the rocky ground as onlookers gazed in utter disbelief...disbelief that the one who should have built a protective cage for the woman's heart, instead just stood there with the harshest of words, casting away the woman's heart like trash without a bin. Yet, she was expected to heal, to smile, to laugh, and hide behind a makeshift mask that made her nerves sweat every time she had to pretend. "I'm fine," she always said. How could the woman heal when every life circumstance unapologetically presented an opportunity for the wounds of the heart to widen and bleed? The pain was surreal.

At another point, the woman experienced a coronary bypass with her friend. A jealous creature of unearthly nature who used the woman's kindness to dump her insecurities. Her quest for competition against the woman was shadowy and exceptionally obscured. She coveted the woman's treasure any chance she got. For years, this ensued until one day the woman's heart took a jab so deep that the knife stayed wedged. Tightly! Deception and misunderstandings revealed the friend's true nature, a horrid beast which knew no bounds. A friend who so quickly used this as ammunition to play the famous Russian Roulette, with the ultimate price for grabs, being the woman's heart. 

Family, partners, and friends are the coronary diseases of the woman's heart, to which, so far, there has been no cure; just open wounds that bleed everywhere they go, giving rise to a fallen soul................ Now, at the stranger's bewildered stare, the woman slowly says, "I do not want this heart anymore for it is heavy, it is time for it to be sold." The stranger quickly says, "how can a heart who has endured so much, still keep beating, I would presume it to be strong. I could surely do with a heart like yours." The stranger then asks the cost of the heart. 

The woman stares fiercely into the distance, away from the gaze of the stranger and sighs. She thinks long and hard. Then the woman turns sharply to face the stranger and meet him at the gates of his wide- eyed wonder and then......finally she says, "Take my heart, and keep it, I finally release it. Take it for all it is worth. Pay it forward, and guard it.......Use it, no charge." The stranger thinks about the bargain and smiles at his luck. The strength of this woman's heart shall be worn proudly. This is the exact kind of sale that he has been looking for, the kind of sale that is free.