Trying to explain
how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time,

how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying
to describe the ways sex darkens

and dies, how two bodies can lie
together, entwined, out of habit.

Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire,
on an old couch that no longer reassures.

The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest
and found ourselves in fog so thick

our lights were useless. There’s no choice,
you said, we must have faith in our blindness.

It hurts sometimes when you’re healing. It’s the sensation of your heart growing bigger. It’s the feel of your old scar tissue breaking up and stretching. It’s the tight and fearful knots of emotion opening up and learning to relax. Those old hurts were actually shrinking your heart with tension, the way tightness in the back can curve and distort the spine.

I know it hurts, but you can learn to experience these feelings as intense sensation and simply surrender yourself; trusting that a new and better you will soon emerge. Fear and resistance will increase the pain. Love and acceptance will ease it.

Let your Heart open wide.

You’ll be opening up more room in your life for love.