Dear heart

Thank you for all the battles you have fought: the ones that were only yours and the ones that were never yours.

There were ones from the beginning of my time, like the blood coursing through my veins.

Then there were ones for the very first time, like when I first fell, or when I first fell in love, or when I first fell out of love.

Do you remember when a boy first smiled at me? or when my mother first smiled at me with pride? Was it joy that made you miss a beat?

Or the time when I really saw my self in the mirror for who I had become, tainted with sanity, strokes of insanity. Was the constriction from you a sort of confusion?

I remember how much pain you were in when I left too many loved ones behind, when too many of them betrayed me, too many of them shamed me. I remember how I wanted to rip you out of my body and offer you up once and for all.

Maybe you’ve forgotten the times when you beat too fast, when I heard the blood rushing through my ears, the times I was forced to do things that I didn’t want, the times I became less than a human, an image of an image of an image. A reflection of a reflection. Not even a former past.

Very few times when you were as calm as a lake and made me wish I had two of you. When someone treated me as an equal, when someone treated me with respect, when someone heard what I was saying without saying much.

Too many times you shook me up, with anger, with fire, with passion for those who couldn’t speak up, for those who were made to be silent, for those who exist no more. I live for those moments.

But tonight I am tired. I want to be alone, without you. Tonight, please don’t fight any more battles, not the ones that are mine nor the ones that are not.