The Story In Every Heart
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Every heart carries a story—
not the one we tell in casual conversations
or paste into holiday cards,
but the real one:
the story written in the pauses,
the fractures,
the soft places we protect
without even realizing why.
There are people who move through the world
with halos of ordinary light,
and we forget—
we forget that inside them
is an entire landscape
shaped by what they’ve survived.
Childhoods that ended too early.
Loves that remade them.
Losses that hollowed out rooms
no one else will ever walk through.
Some hearts learned to speak
only after being silenced.
Some learned to grow
only after being starved.
Some learned gentleness
in houses where gentleness
was never taught.
There are stories
stitched into the quiet ones—
the ones who smile easily
and hurt privately,
who carry their grief
like a secret heirloom
passed down from a time
they’d rather not revisit.
And there are stories
burning inside the bold ones—
flames disguised as confidence,
courage forged from nights
they didn’t think they’d survive.
We walk past these people
every single day,
certain we are strangers,
never realizing
how many universes are beating
just inches from our own.
A woman crying in her car
before work.
A man rehearsing an apology
he’s terrified won’t be accepted.
A teenager holding their breath
through another year of becoming.
A mother remembering the child
she carries only in memory.
Every heart is an epic.
A quiet accumulation
of choices made out of fear,
out of hope,
out of desperation,
out of love.
A thousand pages no one sees,
bound together by the simple miracle
of still beating.
And you—
you walk the world
believing your story
is too small,
too fractured,
too unfinished
to matter.
But even your wounds
have a narrative arc,
even your sorrow
is evidence of your depth,
even your survival
is a story worth reading
in the dark.
The truth is this:
there is no such thing
as an unremarkable heart.
Every person you meet
has a history that could break you
if you knew it.
Every person you love
has carried something
they thought might undo them.
Every person you are
was shaped by moments
only you remember.
And in the quiet,
when no one is demanding anything of you,
you can almost hear it—
the faint turning of your own pages,
the soft, persistent proof
that your story is still unfolding,
and that it is worthy,
simply because
it is yours.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
