Place

Today I opened my heart just the slightest bit.

Not my selfish heart. Not that old false shell.

My beating heart took a leap before my mind could reason with it. I recounted aloud to you how out of place I feel, how odd I have felt, and how irrelevant I will always be.

My thoughts immediately raged and swore. I have always had a bad habit of speaking too hastily, and the words uttered off my tongue can never have as much coherence as the ones I pen here.

I thought to myself, “He must think I want his sympathy.”

“He’ll never see me in the same light again.”

“I’ll always be the girl who wanted his attention.”

Such panicked notions plagued me despite a blatant lack of reason behind them. In my heart I knew them unreasonable. But, when you are me, you will find that rational thought does nothing to sooth even my most ridiculous of fears.

But you. You of all people. I should have known.

You turned to me with the most genuine look of horror I have ever witnessed. I still remember how your hair flipped up the slightest bit and the way your hands froze in the midst of your work.

Those melting brown eyes, sprinkled with the sweetest drops of honey, turned to me with the most heart wrenching sense of sadness. And you said,

“There is no sense of place without you.”

The simplest of expressions. The friendliest of words. And yet my heart sprouted wings and flung itself from its lonesome prison. It forced itself from my rib cage and exploded through my chest in the most glorious display of flutters.

I spent the rest of my day in utmost happiness. I said your name a million times in my mind, in my soul. Such a name as yours could never detatch itself from my heart, even as it flew away from me in wide strokes.

Later in the day, you boasted a beautiful photo of that girl. You were kissing her cheek, and you smiled fondly as you recalled that she took it just this morning. In honor of your birthday.

When it struck me that I had never been the wiser as to the occasion, my heart was yanked ferociously back into its cell and I shrunk away in abject shame.

What right have I to a wonderful man like you if I haven’t even the right to know your birthday?