When you complete a painting, the recommended last step is to apply a fixative. This chemical substance acts as a preservative. It stabilizes the paint. It protects the painting from damage. It is finished.

But for a small cage of ribs, the heart is offered no such protection.  It carries the pain, both exquisite and excruciating. Some may try to put up walls and barriers. Fighting it, as if love were a wind. But I’ve never looked to stability as the cure. The only answer for me is to ride it, feel it — feel it all. 

Walking yesterday, experiencing the exquisiteness of each painful heartbeat, I stopped at a gathering of poppies. Most were braced against the wind, but there was one, not fighting it, just dancing. Petals whipping. A glorious blur of red. 

My life doesn’t need to be fixed. Only lived. And I know, this glorious poppy that beats inside of me, that dances in the winds of change, it, I, will never finish loving you.