Be Gentle With Your Heart, But Please Remember That Not All Loves Are Bad

I want to let you in. More than anything, I wish to feel your footprints dance delicately upon these stained cobblestone floors of the palace where my heart resides.

I can feel you gently pulling on the handles, but I can also see that you have grown restless. It seems the door is locked. As I venture down in hopes that I can help let you in, I find that the doors are not locked from the outside but the inside. A lock made for a key of which I have no recollection of seeing or, better yet, finding. Still, I begin searching.

I search and search, but my heart is the mansion, and the key is lost inside. She has hidden it from me somewhere it seems I will never find. This is our place. Her and I. We have not shared it with another in so long.

“A safe place,” I hear her whisper, an echo thundering throughout the halls.

She does not want me to share her. She does not want someone to take more of her. She has already lost so many pieces of herself. She has grown so much since. Regenerated those dark, forgotten places their knives had left deadened and aching into a warm, safe place where life now flows.

She feels I am betraying her by wishing to share her. She feels I am setting her up. That I am holding the match that will start the fire that burns down all we have built together. She forgets how much I have grown to love her. That I accept every single part of her. Broken or not. That I now know she deserves to be seen because she is magnificent. She is golden. A richness that deserves to be felt and held in the palms of someone good.

Not like the last one. I refuse to hurt her like that again. The brutality that took place.. I sat on my hands and knees for days cleaning up the spilt blood. The blood splattered on the once-white stone, now forever tarnished. I wrung the rags dry and saved every last drop. Used it to fill my diaries with poetry so that at least the pain she had felt wasn’t all for nothing.

“But the pages were filled with so much,” she whispers again, “there isn’t any more room.”

That is why we close the book. We finish the story and open a new one. We take the chance, because not all love is bad.

Days have passed. I have given up hope in finding this key. She has not spoken to me. But I hear her weeping. She knows you are on the other side of the door still, waiting patiently. She does not want to be afraid any longer. She knows time won’t wait forever, that it will inevitably take you away. That I will be deeply saddened, and she will feel everything I feel. Because we are one, she and I.

And suddenly, I feel a jolt unlike anything I have felt before. Amongst the silence, I hear it. The twist of the knob, the creak of the door. A shuddering rumble blows through the halls and awakens me.

She has let you in.

You whisper the softest hello and music fills the air.

And the mansion fills with a burning light. A light so bright it knocks down the walls that have been there for so long.

And the air surrounding you is so warm, like you are made of summer.

And flowers begin to blossom underneath your feet as you walk inside.

And I can hear the once nesting birds come back to life and sing.

And all of the scar tissue turns into lush grass.

And the puddles of tears into streams, flowing with sparkling water.

A place where love can grow.