thorns

As she laid there with her head on his bare chest, watching the world go up and down with every rise and fall of his breath, she already knew this was the last time she would find herself here. The heart knows things before the brain can even comprehend them. She could hear the coffee percolating in the other room and she laid there waiting for the aroma to drift throughout the house, knowing she would stay in this spot long after it was done. She started to count the freckles on his chest while tracing the birthmark on his side, seeing the way he slept with his hands stuck in the edge of his boxers. She sighed. You don’t forget things like that, do you? It’s always the little things that stick with you, making your heart tug when you think about them. She didn’t love him though, she had realized that, but yet she couldn’t leave every time she tried. She had never loved any of them had she? Oh but she had. She’d loved them all but then she didn’t. That’s what scared her. You know when you have this awesome new pack of gum and you just want to make other people happy by giving them a piece of it even if it meant you were left with very little of that gum? That was her heart and mind. She gave piece by piece away, trying to fix someone else, always searching for someone or something to fill the voids but all the while making more voids and never being fulfilled. She would fall in love with ideas and the way people laughed. She would fall in love with the way they brushed her hair out of her eyes or the way they bit their nails. She fell in love with their eyes when they smiled and the way the light caught them. She fell in love with everything and nothing all at once because never did she get to keep them. They always left. Like the tides and the sand, in and out, constantly moving, changing. And this one was no different. She pushed them all away and she knew it. She was always changing, never the same. One day she wanted green and the next she wanted red. One day she wanted to travel the world and the next she wanted a family and wanted to settle down. One day she was treading blue and the next she was deep in a sea of greys and blacks. It was like there were so many people inside of her trying to become one person and it was overwhelming. She felt so deeply that nobody ever understood. She could stare at the sky for hours and feel sad, she could stand in a cemetery with the wind blowing without a single chill going up her spine. She was full and empty; cold and warm hearted. She just wanted more, more, more but how can you want more if you’re not willing to shed the vines of thorns that guard your heart? She shifted and he stirred, reaching a hand up to his face to wipe his eyes. She played like she was still asleep, turning over so that she didn’t have to see his face. “They come and they go,” she thought, “but when will I be brave enough make them stay?