Where Love Heals

My heart was under lock and key for so long.

Not because it didn’t want to love,
but because it had learned what it cost.

It built walls.
It learned silence.
It kept the lights off
so no one would know there was still a home inside.

Then he came into my life
like an unexpected storm.

Not the kind that destroys,
but the kind that changes the landscape.

He moved through places in me
I had forgotten existed.

He knocked away every barrier
and somehow,
without asking,
became the keeper of the pieces
I had spent so long protecting.

I didn’t plan to let him in.

I didn’t hand him a key.

He just arrived,
and somehow my heart recognized him.

And now I am learning the cruelest part of loving someone is figuring

out how to close the door
after someone has already made a home inside.

Because the only way to remove him now
feels like cutting myself open.

And I don’t know how to explain
that losing someone who is still alive
can feel like losing a part of yourself.

I only know that I loved him.

I only know that I let him in.

And maybe that’s why it hurts so much.

Because the same heart
that once protected itself from everyone

found the courage
to love him. 

Yet, he walked away so easily 

as if I meant nothing.

Maybe I never did.

Jacque Michele