♡ Behind the Stanza: Creating “Heart” in Poems for Breakfast

Sparks, sketches, and surprises that shaped the Poems for Breakfast book series.

I was neck-deep in a personal growth course when I started writing "Heart".

It was one of those experiences that demands you dive deep, handle hard questions, and sort through the baggage that you've spent a lifetime trying to evade.

I'm not talking about the sleek four-wheel rollers that glide effortlessly across airports. I’m talking old, ragged baggage, patched up so many times you can barely recognize its original material and always so much heavier than it looks.

The kind of baggage that no longer even functions properly yet somehow still mesmerizes you with a strange, nostalgic texture.

But isn't that where art is born? During the messiest of eras.

HEART

I looked across the country,
I looked out to the sea,
I even checked the mountain view,
To see where you could be.

 I looked up on the moon,
And in everyone I met,
I thought I’d find you somewhere,
Yet nowhere I would get.

It felt like you were far away,
And finally I stopped,
To sit and think of where and when
You could have taken off.

Then I felt you in my arms,
Said you were never gone.
I promise to remember that,
Inside, my heart shines on.

Growth Is Mostly Deletion

Each time I step into arenas of transformation, I'm reminded that growth isn't about fixing or adding.

It's about unlearning.

It's about putting all that stuff down, sorting through what you want to keep, and sayonara to what you don't.

Growth is about peeling away the layers of behaviors and stories that don't support you to reveal who you've always been. It's questioning inherited beliefs about life, love, the world, and the narratives that tell us we must earn our worth.

But as you strip away the mental struggle, what remains?

Your heart. Still beating. Always yours.

Stripping Away the Noise

The illustration for this poem underwent its own transformation. Initially, I sketched complex concepts like hearts entangled with keys, characters and mazes.

They felt too cluttered, too noisy.

The poem is about searching and finding, though I wanted the image to uplift without falling into cliché.

So I let it be simple. Sort of.

The heart symbol isn't just a shape or a metaphor. It is the steady beat that the body's energies wrap and weave around. Sometimes tangled, always giving and receiving, always moving.

The single-line drawing folding into and out of itself became the final expression.

Here's how the heart illustration took shape:

Still In The Game

A friend once put the growth journey into perspective for me in two short lines.

“Is your heart still beating?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you're still in the game.”

Well, dang.

Isn’t that just good to remember?

The Poems for Breakfast series is an illustrated collection of whimsical children’s poem books that make mealtime an adventure.

Available on Amazon in hardcover and paperback. Join the adventure at poemsforbreakfast.com.