Empty Hearted, for dVerse Poets, June 10, 2025

Another lost heart and someone in the background who looks like she could have been its model. SCULPTURE BY ISIDRO XILONZÓCHITL.

EMPTY HEARTED

All those long years ago, it was you who begged me to give you a chance to prove how much you loved me. In the end, I did, opening my heart against the advice of everyone we knew. And when I surrendered that very last part of it, opening myself fully, you proved them right and left. For fifty long years, I have been feeling the lack of your love. “Find someone else to give your heart to–someone worthier than him,” my family and friends have been insisting all that time. But I have no heart to give. When you took back your heart, you took my heart with it. To hurt is to steal.

The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a piece of flash fiction or other prose up of up to or exactly 144 words, including the line “to hurt is to steal” from the song “Mysterious Ways” on U2’s studio album Achtung Baby.

Go HERE to see flash prosery written by others to this prompt.

14 thoughts on “Empty Hearted, for dVerse Poets, June 10, 2025

  1. julieallyn's avatarjulieallyn

    Nicely done.

    I remember none too fondly the heartache, the heart break of betrayal. You’ve articulated this quite well. I’m sad for your pain and for anyone who’s been hurt by someone they’ve loved.

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  2. Lisa or Li's avatarLisa or Li

    Judy, a beautiful-terrible story to weave around the line. When I think about such situations it feels almost like fate that has been carried over from another life.

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      And there is even more to a story to it associated with when the sculptor and my friend Kristina and I went to the beach. Some day I’ll tell that story.. have to go back to the exhibition and get another photo..of a different piece.

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