Excerpt: Section 1 : Dinosaur-Hearted
Maybe nobody can see past your heart. It's so big.
Maybe nobody can see past the spikes in it, the ones so asymmetrical that some days you're thrown off-balance, that some days your heart beats with a limp, that some days you're dangerous to touch.
Maybe nobody is sure how to handle your claws,
your roar,
your teeth that you snap like a drowning poet,
your blue that you wear like skin.
Maybe you feel like they're staring behind you, at the footsteps you left when you carried heavy things like big love and tall sadness.
Maybe they've noticed that you leave no footstep at all now, like a vanished one, an extinct creature, a dinosaur.
Maybe you are a dinosaur, basically.
Maybe you have a dinosaur heart and it's supposed to be big, and it's supposed to be spiked, and it's supposed to scare people a little.
The ones who should be scared,
but not you,
never you.
Don't be afraid to be dinosaur-hearted.
You are not alone, my love. We are not extinct.
We have seen things so heartbreaking our blood held its breath, our pulse learned to shatter. So heartbreaking, we learned how to store kindness in our veins, how to love through a cage, how to trust the compass in our bandaged hearts.
We have always found the way. We have always known the way.
We have always been the way.You don't need a map or a guide or a dream, you simply need your heart.
It is yours today, and today will always be yours.