Pigtails and Summertime

How do you protect delicate things?

My heart knows this pain.
My heart has fault lines, tectonic plates.
Maybe not always moving, maybe not always gasping, maybe not always gaped open, but always a splintered thing.

My heart knows the sting of abandonment.
It has been beaten. It has known poisons left by promises that should never have been spoken.

My heart has been here and will continue coming back to this place to remind me of all the things I never should have said.
What is my life but a list of things I should have or should not have done?

I am fault lines.

My heart saw beauty, before the innocence was ripped open, gushing.
My heart knows why storms, dark and destructive, are named after people.

Their hearts are the amber rays shining on a field of wild flowers.
Their hearts are glistening dewy leaves on much too early to be awake mornings.
Their hearts are all the colors of sunrises and sunsets.

Their hearts have not seen enough exciting, beautiful things to know this pain.

Their hearts have never known that pain is a real thing you feel in your marrow.
It is a stubbed toe to them, Or falling out of bed onto the cold, hard tile.
Pain to them subsides with cookies and kisses.
A fleeting, temporary twinge and then its back to racing the dogs around the yard and climbing trees.

How do you protect delicate things, when you know the ruptures with your own arteries?
When you want to rip your veins out and wrap them, pulsing, around thier hearts to absorb the impact?
God, make me their bubble wrap, because I have felt this many times and they are fragile.

When they find out daddy is running errands until 3am to be away from mommy,
how do you protect delicate things?