st. valentine & i

I want to be a lover. I want to be a romantic. I want to be an optimist who probably falls way too quickly and for way too many people. There is so much in this world to love and it disappears before any of us can realize how desperate we are to appreciate it, and yet it is right in front of our eyes.

Instead, I run. Like a coward. I am afraid of getting hurt, and thus it is better to place a barbed wire around my heart. Then, no one can come close to me. What I’ve found however, is that the only one in pain is me. When life gets a little too chaotic, and I take too big of a breath, the barbs dig just a little bit deeper. And then it gets a little bit harder to breathe. And then the barbs go farther. And then the shaky breaths. And then the barbs, plunging into my heart, digging in until they’re covered in blood and barely visible.

Now I need surgery. They ask what happened. How do I say that I was scared? “I wrapped it myself, I couldn’t let anybody near me.” But there’s only blood on one side of the wire. The other is completely sterile, never even having been touched.

Why did I do this? Why must I suffer when I saved myself from love? Not even from one person, but from anybody. I couldn’t risk having someone else place the barbed wire. It had to be me. It was always going to be me.