When We Collided

by Emery Lord

The heart is such a strange little beast—a lump of thick muscle with pipes sticking out. Sometimes I think my heart is made of rubber, and the world stretches it and twists so that it writhes in my chest and aches. This is why I have spent most of my time on this planet here but hurting. Sometimes I think a heart of porcelain would be easier. Let it drop out of my rib cage and break on the floor, no heartbeat, the end. Instead, I get a bouncy heart that bleeds when the world claws at it but keeps beating through the pain.

But the point is that trying to make things better sometimes makes us better, too. The point is I’m trying to create good things in the midst of the bad. Grief or no grief. And in my case, it’s still somewhere in between.

“When we collided, we bounced each other back into orbit. And now we have to do that—we have to return to our own paths because that’s what we gave each other.”

It’s a nasty voice, the one in my head that hisses, You do not deserve them. But maybe the universe knew that things would be hard for me sometimes. Maybe it gave me the very best people because it knew I’d need them. And wouldn’t I be rude, to not accept the love I was offered? Wouldn’t I be spitting right in the face of destiny?