To the guarded heart: You have loved. You have opened. You have let someone in. Again and again. And you have been broken. Torn into a million tiny pieces, like a vase of sand shattering on concrete, particles crumbling into dust.

Now you turn away, and shut off whenever you feel someone getting too close. You are terrified to let them in. Terrified that they will be like the others, the others who have pretended to love, who have loved for their purpose, who have lied, who have cheated, who tried to change you, who have betrayed you.

You are a guarded heart now, secured by walls of scars, skin, and thick, protective arteries. You have built a fortress around yourself, strong veins intertwined like a cage.

You feel safe, alive, pulsing with blood. You have become strong in your independence, too strong to ever want anything else.

But guarded heart, you are wrong. You are not fragile. Not now. Not then. You have always been something real, something tangible, something precious, but not weak. You are built of valves and tubes and oxygenated blood. You have important duties: to breathe, to love, to live.

A guarded heart is an unhappy heart. A guarded heart is a useless heart. So love again. Open again. Time after time, despite tears and rips and brokenness, love again.

Believe in the possibility of someone who will mend you with words and actions and passion as powerful as surgery, stitching up every loose vein, wrapping around every closed valve and opening, letting hope back in.

Give yourself away. Trust that you will be held with care, gentle fingertips supporting the weight of you, treating you not as fragile but as priceless, valued.

Do not be afraid of the could, of the what if, of the negatives that swirl around and suffocate each cell. Have faith in the possibility, in the happiness, in the yes.

Heart, you were meant to love and be loved.

To share yourself with another, and another, and another. Do not guard yourself. Do not give up. You were meant to give and give and never stop giving. You will never be emptied.