Let Me Listen

I want to see you from the inside. I want to lay beside you and listen to your heart beat and see what I can find. What makes you tick? What are your hopes, what are your fears? What do you daydream about? What keeps you awake at night? Or maybe it’s best not to know.

Would it hurt too much to understand and not be able to fix it? My heart’s not big enough. I’m trapped in a shell that won’t let me feel. I’m captured in a fortress that leaves me unable to rescue you. If I could, I’d break free and run until I found you, no matter how far away it is or how many times I might trip and fall.

I want to feel and not care. To stop wondering why I feel this way or talk myself out of it because it’s not the way I’m supposed to feel. I want to be your refuge—a place unlike any other. Somewhere you can run and hide and not fear the outside or the walls. A place where it’s always bright and warm, and you finally realize who you really are and smile.

But my arms can only reach so far, and my walls are sometimes cold and cracked. Sometimes my roof leaks… and lets the tears in no matter how hard I try to fight them off of you. Why can’t I be enough? Why can’t I ward off all of the things that hurt you, take them into myself and let me hurt for you instead? But I find that the enemy is much more than a beast. And the fight is waged on more than an open battlefield, with the wind slanting the pale grass. It is a battle waged outside the depths of physical strength—I cannot grapple with those things that hurt you most. And all too often I become the very thing I want to destroy. There are dragons waging war on your heart that are far too big for me to fight with a sword—with fires too hot to be warded off by armor. How can I protect you from what I cannot see? How can I save you from the things that you cannot tell me about?

So I will fight with more than a sword. I will protect you with more than armor. I will fight on my knees until they are no more. Rather than fix my cracked walls or patch my leaky roof, I will ask the Skymaker to calm the wind and stop the rain. And when there’s nothing else I can do; when all else has failed you; when my best efforts are useless…

I will be here.