This Is Love

       When I’m nervous, I pull my hair until it stretches out of my head for miles. I pull it until it reaches leagues across the world back around to me. Then I begin to chew on that wheat sprouting out of my head like one chews on a carrot. And I keep chewing and chewing all the way down to my scalp. Once I reach my scalp, I keep going. I slowly gnaw on the flesh of my head till my light bulb is gone with a satisfying crunch. After the lights burn out, I dive down the stump where my head and neck should’ve been connected and I rip out every organ and important thing that sustains life inside of me. I chomp them all to bits and spit them into glass bottles and sell them as medicine on the black market.
     But I save the heart for myself. With blood dripping down my chin I use my teeth to peel layers off of my beating organ and hang them on a strand of hair reaching across here and forever. I then stand beside it and hold a little cardboard sign that reads “Pieces of my heart, free for the taking.” Monsters walk by and are immediately attracted by the grotesqueness of the situation. They pluck off strips for themselves. It hurts.
     Bt then there are those who walk by and are disgusted, wanting nothing to do with me. It also hurts. I hold up my framed Masters Degree in Giving Oneself Away. As time progresses people hardly notice me. They just run up and take or abandon. The portions of my heart are getting fewer and fewer even though forever is a long ways away.
     Suddenly, I feel the slightest tender quiver on my scalp. I gasp and my pupils widen. Where the last strip of heart is, I see you, my God, my Savior, and my best friend. I peer closer at you and see thin wisps of blood floating out of the cracks in your skin where they beat you. A thorn is in your hand and you are threading the blood into the thorn. You then proceed to gently pluck pieces of my heart off the tight rope and stitch them back together. I drop my sign and fall to the ground. With every pierce of the thorn my body is racked with pain, a good pain, a pain that feels like stepping into the sunlight for the first time.
     I drag myself to you as you finish sewing the last pieces of my heart together. You caress it in your hand and command that I lie still. I do. I am unworthy of such a creation as beautiful as that in your hand. You reach down to me and separate my ribs along my sternum. I hear my bones crack and splinter and I struggle away. I don’t want this, I was happy before.
     A still small voice whispers “Be still, stop fighting.”
     I stop. I close my eyes to your voice, my God, my Savior, my best friend. Replacing all the vitals back in my carcass, you staple my head back on. Then slowly but surely, you reach into my chest cavity and lock my renewed heart into place. My body writhes. I reach up and try to push you away but your hands brace me down. I plead with you. “What is this? What are you doing to me?”
      Again your still small voice whispers “This, this feeling, is Love.”
     “Love? This is Love? What about all those men I’ve been with? What about every relationship?”
     Your voice raises and fills every gap in the world. “That was not Love. My Love for you is so deep that I died for you. My Love for you is so strong that I take you back no matter how many times you mess up. My Love for you is so vast that you seem like a tiny hummingbird in an African Serengeti compared to my Love.” Your voice once again became still and small and calming, “So please, stop resisting, stop holding it all in and let me Love you.”
     As your words wash over me, I relax and finally let go of every pain, every broken heart, and every regret I’ve ever had. And when I do, 3 doves burst out of my open rib cage and fly straight up into the sky till they blend in with the sun.