There’s a jar on my desk. It’s unassuming, small, and simple, but what’s inside is anything but. It’s a child’s heart—mine. Once full of life, once full of warmth, now reduced to something unrecognizable, preserved in a container that never asked for it.
I keep it there, in the jar, not because I want to, but because I have no choice. You see, I tried to let it go once. I tried to let it beat free, to feel again, but every time it does, it cracks open a wound deeper than the last. So, I contained it—pressed it into that glass. I have to watch it, listen to its rhythmic pulse, that fragile heartbeat that still wants to live, still longs to escape. But it’s trapped now. It can’t go anywhere. It’s mine, but it’s not mine anymore.
I can hear it sometimes, late at night. The soft beat, faint, like a whisper calling out in the dark. Sometimes I press my fingers to the glass, feeling its desperation. I wonder if it remembers what it was like before, before it had to be confined. Or perhaps it doesn’t, perhaps it’s learned to exist in this new, suffocating silence. But I know better than to open it, to let it out. The last time I did, the noise it made was unbearable, like a scream muffled behind a wall that I couldn’t tear down.
Every day, I watch it—my heart, locked away, shivering in the cold jar. A thing of innocence, now tainted, now broken. It used to be beautiful. But now, I think it might be rotting, not from the outside, but from within. I don’t dare look too closely, afraid of what I might see. What happens when something meant to be pure is trapped for too long? Does it decay? Does it fester and grow darker, twisted in its own isolation?
Sometimes, I catch myself wondering if it still wants to be free, if it ever will. But then I remember—it’s mine. No one else can touch it. No one else can fix it. Not anymore. It’s too far gone, too deep in its cage to ever escape. And I am too terrified to let it out, to face whatever might spill out once the lid is lifted.
So, I leave it there, locked away. Beating quietly, hopelessly.
Just a heart in a jar. Mine. And yet, not mine.