there you are!

i have been searching all over for you!

where have you been, and why is your heart in pieces on the floor?

all the edges sharp and hungry.

there is a lazy, late afternoon sun outside, and listen—a little boy is laughing, riding his bicycle in happy circles freedom at last!

and if you look up, you will see that the sky is porcelain blue—the exact shade of joy, and a
blackbird is singing in the wildest corner of the garden, but here you are—away from it all trying to find the numbers on the broken pieces that make up all that you are.

how to put yourself back together again—that’s what you want to know, isn’t it?

so tell me—is this really about love?

and did you finally allow yourself to fall back into someone’s heart?

how terrifyingly beautiful!

and yes, i see what’s happened.

you kicked off your shoes, and dipped your toes into the cool of the water pooling unexpectedly on the hidden side of your life—the part that you had completely forgotten about, until you stumbled upon it early one evening, just after you knew your old life wasn’t breathing anymore, and then—there it was—a little pond in the middle of your nowhere.

a secret place.

nobody could find you there and and it was a place where you could heal—could show your real skin and speak with your very first voice, the one from when you were still real, and it was good.

and that little pond was full of all the things you hadn’t seen in such a long time and your skin needed to feel that coolness too, that thing that you were too scared to crave, but you were desperate for, weren’t you, and so you threw it off—all the caution you had hanging around your neck in the shape of a key, and that key was so good at keeping things locked, but it was so heavy with fear and disappointment, wasn’t it?

and so you did a big, brave thing and you threw it all to the wind as a gift, and you stepped into love.

but here’s the thing, beautiful one, you love with a heart that remembers things, and you don’t know how to let this new love hold you close without feeling afraid.

that you are not enough.
that you are too much.

that another will come along
and shine brighter than you.

i know what that feels like, and it’s hard to find the right words
to put into your lover’s hands—to explain why you want to run away.

want to hide, before they might, just perhaps in the right light, see that you are not who they want.

and you have been there before, haven’t you?

and you know better than most, that words need to be undressed—completely naked, so that they can talk with their own voice and that is a terrifying thing, isn’t it?

because not everybody likes naked words, some people only know how to run from them.

and in trying to find those words, and in trying to listen to the quiet voice of all the women within you—somehow you don’t know what you are hearing—is it the old ripples of your once-broken heart, or the truth from a thousand women before you, saying ‘please, please be careful…tread lightly’.

and now you don’t know what to do, because you want to be loved and oh, how you want to love, but you don’t know how to put trust together into its proper shape with only the bits of string and the six rusty nails that you have inherited.

i don’t know what to say to you.

for once i have no advice, no words to rub into your fear, other than, ‘give it time’.

your heart will know soon enough—trust its wisdom.

and if it is love—real, live, breathing, hoping, holding, protecting, respecting, carrying, choosing-only-you-over-and-over-love, then your pieces will find their way back carried by another’s hands—if it is love, then this is what will happen.

so here, let’s have some tea together, sweet and strong and in the best cups.

sit here with me—see how the light falls onto the floor and finds its way into the cracks?

it’s like liquid gold.

it gets everywhere.

you can’t stop it if you tried.

if it’s love—real love—that’s precisely what will happen.

to you.
to them.

all the cracks—yours and theirs, will be filled to the brim with each other’s light.

and it will fall from your face and your eyes and your mouth and your words will be birds singing in the light.

you will see.

if it’s love, you can’t stop it even if you tried.

— real love gets everwhere.

© Liezel Graham 2020.

Image by Olga Serjantu.
Unsplash.

this is for you if your heart remembers how things hurt before and you are standing with your feet in new love, but you are afraid.

this is for you if you don’t know how to trust because you can still feel those old ripples from the other times when you went in too deep and nearly drowned.

this is for you if you are not sure whether what you are hearing is the shadow of your old fears, or the old wisdom of your intuition.

if it’s love it will fill up all the cracks, just like late afternoon light on an old wooden floor, and you won’t be able to stop it even if you tried.

liezel