I think of my heart as a passport

I think of my heart as a passport, and every book and every person or creature I have ever loved, a stamp to another country.

To a place of discovery.  

A whole other world.

I’m remembering The Flamenco Academy, Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, The Memoirs of a Geisha, The Lord of the Rings, Nana, The Little Prince, Eloise at the Plaza. The last two lines of Margo’s Got Money Troubles. All these words, love stories etched on my epicardium.

Even the hummingbird has its stamp. Yet, not necessarily proportionate to its size.

As has the osprey.

The cormorant.

The fox.

A killer sunset.

The green juvenile herons.

My cousin, Anne, a person with her very own stamp on my heart, says that after a trip abroad she tends to grieve, be blue for a few days. The leaving of a country and return home can be treacherous. If anything, disappointing.

I wonder as I get older if the stamps on my heart will remain indelible or fade, if some are deeper than others, if like a black fraternity brand, Kurt, Emma, Annabelle, and Kayla’s stamps will scar and change my heart’s shape, as I visit their countries most often and longest, or if like a drop of rain on a window sill the mark of the small diamond back turtle I met yesterday and was mesmerized by will dry to nothing.

Or, until I next see her.

Stamp upon stamp covering my myocardium and endocardium.

Now, I’m thinking of people like Barack Obama or Dolly Parton how thick their heart passport must be. How one should freely travel in the realm of love for our days are numbered and our growth, I believe, is in direct correlation to our numbers of stamps. Or our curiosity to visit these foreign lands.