A Woman with Heart: For Anne, this Valentine’s Day

A Woman with Heart

For Anne, this Valentine’s Day

A heart in every room – stone, cloth, glass –

Anne, collector of the world’s pulse,

your shelves hold tributes, tender and small,

while your own heart, the true north in this house,

expires quietly beneath hospital lights.

You taught me to find heart everywhere:

in river rocks, in pockets sewn by hand,

in the echo of laughter across the kitchen tiles.

Now, grief is a shape I cannot hold,

a torn red banner, flapping in the storms of February.

My heart, once stitched to yours, rips anew each day –

not breaking, but shredded, threadbare and raw,

as I trace your fading outline in the morning light.

But you, Anne, are still a woman with heart:

even as you slip from this world,

you leave behind a trail of hearts

for me to gather and cradle,

reminders that love, even shattered,

beats on in the spaces you once filled.

If you feel like keeping track of Anne’s cancer journey, I’m chronicling it in prose and poetry here:

Your friend,

Robert

A happy Valentine’s Day to one and all!

The paper heart that Anne is holding came as a gift from an elementary school student here in Ottawa, Ontario.