Joyas Voladores

The essay, Joydas Voladoras, confused me the first few times I read it. After I read it several times, the piece of writing gained some meaning to me. The meaning I took was that no matter what size the heart is it will one day be broken. I think the essay is discouraging, because it basically says that everyone and everything is alone. It makes me think of times the heart is greatly affected in a positive or negative way. My favorite line was the last sentence because it shows that all the work someone can put in to protecting the heart can come crumbling down at the most powerful and simple touches of love. "You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children."