Life Between the Crosshairs

The trouble with being a damaged person is that you identify with other damaged persons you encounter. You spend a lifetime patching up those gaping wounds, packing them with distance and indifference. You walk around in a shell of a body, your eyes watching but your soul sleeping. You build a wall chest-high, armor to protect your heart and all that can damage it. Fragile, it lies hidden, yearning for tenderness that only love can administer. Only that can truly fix you.

When your eyes fall on a person - living life in a shell of their body, looking on with unfocused eyes, you recognize it. You see their pain, feel their wound - fall in love with their suffering. And you build a door and give them a key. You let them in, hand them your broken wing and rejoice in your sameness. You assume - unfailingly - that any animal that is wounded as you are - will avoid the cold, rusty legtrap. But you’ve forgotten never to assume.

You give them all they need to destroy. Your heart, your soul, the inner self that you protect so fiercely. You draw them a map to your tenderest muscle and colour it in. You laugh when they laugh, cry when they do - and try to uplift them when they are dented.

But you have forgotten: sometimes - people aren’t what you perceive, and they will rob, stab and blind you. Some people are broken beyond repair, and what appears good about them only smells sweet because it rots from the inside.

It is a smell you will never forget.

I promise you.

DAG