Size is Everything

there once was a boy
with a heart so big
he had to hide it behind a really big sweater
and I am talking a REALLY big sweater,
and this sweater would sweat and his brow would get wet,
and all would get muddy, clouds into rain and fear into pain
and his heart
was still hidden away.

He walked through this life
Thumping away, left sided and slanted and true,
and the people beside him, could not comprehend, upright and even as two,
they couldn’t see past his halfway ways
And called him at last

the boy with the barrel chest.

But don’t you all see
The boy once did cry
It’s not my chest at all
but a really big heart.
And they laughed and they snickered
And he cowed and he dithered
Until finally
He did agree. He would be barrel-chested and loud and brave
And hide behind not sweater, no no, but a cool demeanor and aftershave
The girls they did flock and the boys were a-wonder
At how our big-hearted boy did not fall under
The spell of the masses, the primary school classes,
But just stood, cool demeanor, not a second too late.

Until.

One day came along a girl
With a heart so big
She had to hide it behind a really big mouth
And I am talking a REALLY big mouth,
She huffed and she puffed and wouldn’t shut up
And so they all laughed
and then cried
“would you please give our ears a break
and your conscience a gentle shake?”
But she grinned knowing
the silence was growing
in the heart spaces kept out of reach
and with no way of finding
a heart like hers
hence the to-ing and fro-ing,
it was a lesson she learned to teach.

So the boy with the sweater and the girl with the mouth
Met with pistols in the churchyard at dawn
She shouted “get going”, and he shirked, not knowing
That she was all talk and no fire.
For the pistol was empty, it clicked and it clacked
And he called her so coolly a liar.
But she turned with a shrug, pulled a moth from a jug
And proceeded to tap his big chest.
I know what you’re keeping, I hear the creeping
Of something too big to protest.
And before he knew a hole formed and the beat-beating one could not deny,
so with nothing to say, and nothing to do, in silence their two hearts now lie.