megfowler.com

When I think of you, I never think of a red paper valentine crumpled deep in my pocket, or a blue-purple prop of pulsing tissue invented for pretend surgeons to hold.

No, I think of a rosy stuffed satin heart my mother once received in a floral arrangement. When the carnations and roses died, the heart became a sort of weapon in our house.

We’d throw it at one another with a single, hissed syllable — “Flot!” — before running away to avoid the sure return of fire.

I’m not sure why we did it, but I like it better that I don’t remember.

I can close my eyes and see myself pitching that shiny heart a thousand times, giggling like a fiend as I made my escape.

If you threw it too hard, it would hurt. Too soft, and it would land short of your target. Then the cat would come steal it away, and you might not see it again for a week.

It was a pretty unlucky heart, that one.

But I guess you know how that goes, don’t you?

I’ve been tossing you around for years… sideways, up and down, aiming here and there and nowhere.

I’ve seen you glance off a few bodies and be caught by others.

Sometimes they hang on to you.

Sometimes you fall to the ground moments later.

Sometimes they throw you back.

But you’ve been airborne for so long that I wonder if you’d even know how to sit peacefully in my chest and beat like a good heart, keeping time and keeping counsel and keeping the blood flowing to my winter-cold toes.

It doesn’t help that my tosses are usually ill-calculated — a lack of skill evident in the rips across your surface and the bits of stuffing you leave in your wake.

You take the miscalculations again and again, though, and still manage to stay soft in my palm.

I often wonder if it would be easier for you if you could just harden up a little… but you don’t and you won’t and you never have.

Thank God.

Even when I choose the wrong places to send you, stay this way.

Even when I send you flying too hard, stay this way.

Even when you feel your seams ripping open, stay this way.

Even when you wonder how the hell you’ll beat again when I finally let you be… stay this way.

Because I’ll figure out one day that you are neither decoration, nor toy, nor joke, nor weapon.

No.

You are for blood and for life and for love and for those who hold you dear.

You are for me.

You are for the one I choose.

And most definitely not for the cat.

Love,

Meg