Let Me In

What do you do with a heart you can’t feel? Who do you give it to? You give it to the girl you want to try for, you give it to the girl who makes you want to feel. My heart is so hardened, my heart is so cold to the feelings that create vulnerability. I chose not to feel, not to care, not to worry about anyone other than myself until I met her. I met her when I was at my lowest, when the only thing keeping me alive was the lack of motivation to kill myself. I never thought I would get out of it. I never thought I’d find someone to make me forget how it felt to be cold, forget how it felt to be lonely, to not care, to not worry. She ripped herself open and folded me up inside of her, I toured through her bloodstream, stopping at every point in her body where she had been wrongfully touched. Where her parents had hit her too hard, pulled her too hard. Where they left bruises and welts that stung her for days. Where boys had laid their hands where they did not belong. Where the kisses were empty and the touch was numbing. Where girls had thrown words that hurt more than bricks. Where the sticks and stones had been thrown. When I got to her heart and I saw that the red had turned to purple in some spots, how deep in its pit the colors were changing, from red, to blue, to purple, to black. All over were bruises of different sizes that weren’t healing fast enough. I saw that her heartbeat had many pauses. I saw that her lungs struggled to rise and fall and then I knew; I wasn’t the only one who had been ostracized and bullied. I wasn’t the only one who knew what it meant to be broken, to continuously try to repair the leaks and the tears that other people have so easily let happen. I saw that she was broken and scarred. I saw that this girl, who smiled at everything, who easily found the beauty in all things, was hiding so much from the people she wouldn’t let in. I climbed up from her heart and danced around her collarbones until I made my way inside of her brain. I saw the movies of every time she had been hurt, of every time she had been lied to, been beaten, broken, and used. I saw the lists of reasons she wanted to die, of the many things she disliked about herself. I saw the images of her past. Amidst the chaos, I found her dark room, hidden away behind the bustle of negatives. I opened the door and wandered in. It was so cold, and it was so dark and quiet. I flipped a switch and the red glow from an overhead light illuminated just enough for me to see wires from one end of the ceiling to the other, with a myriad of positive pictures. I was captivated, I spent most of my time inside this room. Finding my favorites, finding the ones that made me smile even though I wasn’t there when the memories were created. I decided to stow a few images in my pockets and left the room. When I stepped back into the turbulent atmosphere of her negatives, I noticed them stop. All of the movies paused and the images stopped swinging and twirling around simultaneously. I felt the pressure on me, the pressure to put back the positives and let the negatives have full control. I ran past them trying to find an exit. I climbed down around her ocean blue eyes and slid down the slope of her button nose and landed on the tip of her tongue. I could feel the humidity from all of her embarrassing stories, the reddish pink colors on the walls of her mouth resembled her rose blushed cheeks. I knocked on her teeth, signaling her that I was ready to come out. She pulled me out, the presence of her unease was thick in the air. I presented to her the pictures I stole from the room she had desperately tried to keep hidden. I offered them to her, she was too kind, too smart, too beautiful to run from the things that could make her happy. I showed her how they made me smile, how she made me smile. I showed her that I accepted her bruises and her scars. That I accepted the parts of her that people have tried so hard to deny. I pulled her in for a hug and allowed her to fall into my bloodstream next.

*All words are my own. Please do not steal my work!*