AWARDED SECOND PLACE IN THE PHILIP PYKE MEMORIAL PRIZE 2025
/ˈhɑːtləs/
Adjective
1. displaying a lack of feeling or consideration
2. lacking a heart
I hope you’re looking after it.
I hope you’re looking after it like a mother looks after her child. Caring, sharing, hardly
daring to breathe in case something goes wrong.
I picture it by your side, always. Because that’s where I left it, wasn’t it? By your side; in
your arms – thinking we’d be together forever and ever and ever.
My heart sits on your bed, waiting for you to wake. It’s small – smaller than you’d think –
and during the night there were many times when you nearly knocked it to the floor. It would
bounce, though. After what you did to it, it’s almost indestructible.
But it is small. Small enough that you hardly notice it. When your alarm rings and you
murmur with protest, it escapes the flap of your arms as you reach for your phone, and the
bleary gaze as your eyes adjust to the lightness of the room. The heart sits there, pumping and
pumping and pumping. You get to your feet. Drink some water. Ignore it.
Once, it was the only thing you saw.
You go in the shower. The heart listens from the bed – not needing to see, not needing to
know. The image of you, muscle-taut and waterlogged, is imprinted onto its memories. You
return, towel wrapped around waist, and it gives a secret sigh.
It follows you to work. Tucked in your bag, nestled there without you knowing, and sits
amongst the blare of phones and the click of keyboards in the office. Feeling the itch of
protein bar wrappers against its membrane; the smell of months’-old mints and deodorant
from the hidden pocket you’ve forgotten about. When it hears you speak – confidently,
authoritatively, issuing instructions to employees – it pumps faster. My heart never saw you
like this, before. It never got the chance.
I didn’t mean to leave it behind. I didn’t want to. After all those messy days and the dreadful
haze of post-breakup despair, all I wanted was to hate you. To snatch back my heart and
memories and to send you out of my life without a second thought. Knowing that you, like
always, would never, ever, be enough.
But I didn’t.
My heart sits there, pressed against your arm, as you go outside and eat lunch. Listening to
the birds, feeling the spring breeze against your skin. It takes your pulse – ba-bum, ba-bum,
ba-bum. Once, we were completely and utterly in sync. Now?
You sit alone, eating your sandwich, and are happy.
*
Hearts have memories. Not in the cognitive sense, but still. Memories carved into the
heartbeat, slipping straight between the ventricles and waiting for the blood to flow. You’d
think not many would fit, right?
Wrong.
The heart is only small, but it contains an infinity of emotion.
After work, you smile at a girl. A good girl, a pretty girl, sitting on the metro with knee-high
boots and tulips wrapped in brown paper. My heart, still in your bag, swells with love and
distress. That smile was mine, once. That lift of the cheeks and the openness of your mouth.
The heart remembers, too, what follows – hours and hours of drowning in those eyes, feeling
that gaze explore its soul with gentle, unbounded wonder.
The girl smiles back. The carriage lurches, brakes screeching, and the heart goes flying
against the dirt-streaked window. Splat.
Across the ocean, I feel a tiny, tiny jolt.
Nighttime. You sit, huddled on the sofa, and hold a cushion in your arms. My heart blaze
crimson, but you don’t see. You never do. It could cause a solar eclipse and you still wouldn’t
care. When it’s happy or sad, or even aroused – none of it matters to you, now. The heart sits,
full and flooded with emotion, only to be swallowed by the glow of the TV and your
indifference. It doesn’t want to be there, anymore. It wants to move on, and live a life worth
all the love it has to give.
But, try as I might, I still can’t get it back.
You sleep. Falling into a soundless slumber, where dreams rarely plague your mind. The
heart sits and watches, wanting to leave, but it’s trapped.
Meanwhile –
I live. In shadows and sunlight, pushing through the darkness. Moving on, moving forwards
– taking each tick of the clock as another stitch towards healing. But it’s hard, without a heart.
Nothing has much meaning.
Somebody else catches feelings. I can see it in their eyes, and the way their words flow.
They look at me, the way you did – but this time my chest feels cold and empty, and I can
barely muster a smile. They’re worth ten of you. They’re worth a thousand of you, after what
you did.
I let them down gently, feeling everything but nothing at all.
It takes time, people say. Things will get brighter and better and soon you’ll forget them.
You’ll forget what they wore and the way your chest soared at even the faintest, slightest
touch. Somebody new will come along, and they’ll make it all worthwhile. You’ll make new
memories with them – and the old ones, the old stirrings of affection and attachment and lust,
will eventually fade away.
How many somebodies does it take to fix a broken soul?
I go on more dates. I buy flowers. I live and love with my friends, embracing the lines that
come with laughter and loss and age. Moments like these are a temporary resurrection –
filling that void with a happiness and joy that I thought I’d lost forever. I find in myself an
inner peace, and know, that whatever may come, I can face it with strength. With strength,
with courage – and without you.
But my heart beats on, by your side, and it still won’t come back.
