Origami Butterfly

Each person who enters your life,

Leaves a mark upon you,

It’s a saying heard all the time,

It’s a saying I know is true.

For each one who hurt me,

Or left me hanging out to try,

Has folded a small corner of my heart,

Into itself, and left it to die.

My heart became something different,

A sculpture I didn’t recognize,

With intricate and fragile layers,

Like an origami butterfly.

Locked in upon itself, it sat,

Quite the tangled piece of art,

Too fragile for the roughest hands,

Too complex for the less than smart.

In its ivory, bony encasing,

The edges began to fray and peel,

It’s worn out appearance was,

All I came to know and feel.

My heart no longer flapped in hope,

Or soared in unfettered bliss,

It merely observed its surroundings,

And accepted that this was it.

It took a curious disposition and,

Furious determination, such as yours,

To start with one small fold first,

Before undoing more and more.

It may have taken many years but finally,

My heart has opened and started to feel anew,

The great rush of pure, raw emotion,

Took quite a bit of getting used to.

While adjusting, I know I became sulky,

Sitting in silence and staring into the void,

It was hard to even make heads or tails,

Of all the things inside me I once thought destroyed.

It was all muddled and overwhelming,

And I blamed you for the personal hell,

You were the one who laid my heart open,

Shouldn’t you be responsible for how it felt?

It took time for me to learn that I was its keeper,

It was up to me to make it wise and strong,

Only then would it find what it truly wanted,

The love for which it longed.

My heart journeyed as far as it could go and,

Became a million things, before I let it retreat,

It came right home and knew where it belonged,

So I placed it in my hands and laid it at your feet.

You took the time to learn the hardest folds,

And you smoothed the roughest, deepest curves,

My heart is the only gift I could give,

That would amount to what you truly deserve.

It took all of my power to separate from my heart again,

But the risk was worth the reward in my new husband.