“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”

I’ve read a great many poems in my life, some better than others. This one particularly strikes a chord within me, as I spend my life searching for true love. I believe, like many before me, I have come close. Thisclose; and yet thisclose is so far away, the same as second place at The Kentucky Derby, a difference of millions in payout.

With each person I meet, I learn a little bit more (and in some cases a lot more) about myself than I knew before. What I am capable of. What I am not. What I want. What I do not. What I am willing to put up with. What I am not.

For every failed relationship and failed potential relationship, it brings me closer to her. Those endings in the past used to bring with it a profound sadness. And now, while I have my moments of mourning, I pick myself up significantly faster than I ever did, possibly because I know that someday soon, I am about to meet her.

Whoever this woman is, “i carry [her] heart with me”. As I walk thru this journey to meet her, my heart remains a young heart. Perhaps that’s why it has taken so long. My heart needs to age before it can meet and be ready for her heart.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                                  i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” Copyright 1952, © 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage.