Poem: "Wild Hearts Can't Be Spoken"

This poem came out of the October 2, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from natasiakith.  It also fills a square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo Card for "loss of voice."  This poem belongs to the series Fledgling Grace, which you can explore further on the Serial Poetry page.  It predates the Fledging and lays some background for the cosmology.  It has been sponsored by rix_scaedu.

There is a circle of Hell
where all is silent.

At first the new arrivals don't mind
because good communicators
rarely wind up damning themselves.
They've lost their lives and their souls --
what's a voice compared to that?

They only learn the value of tears
when they have none left to shed,
the treasury of screams
after it has emptied itself.

Trust is unknown here,
yet it chips its way out of them
like a chick pipping through an egg,
driven by a sudden inevitable need
to emerge from its shell.

Love is forbidden here,
yet somehow,
it happens anyway
stubborn vine cracking its way
through the heart's pavement.

They find each other,
press their souls close
against the pain of perdition
and impossibly find comfort.

There is no binding,
because they are wild hearts
and cannot be bound,
not even by the laws of Hell itself.

Only their eyes
disclose their emotions,
falling for each other
in a peculiar communion --

and in that moment they are enclosed
quite abruptly within a smooth sphere,
plummeting up out of Hell
to whack against Heaven's gate.

They spill out onto the clouds,
shaking the wet feathers of their wings.
The clouds curl up to wrap them in white robes,
and a halo slowly dawns above each befuddled head.

They are silent still.
They will never join a chorus
before the Throne of God,
but it does not matter,
for all they have left to say
is wordless, breathless thought.

Wild hearts can't be spoken.