Keep You Right Here

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I've pondered this quote for nearly two decades, and never quite felt myself submit to it entirely. To love someone, or to give love, fully, requires the utmost vulnerability. Prying open oneself is a violent, but ecstatic process. Conjuring the deepest parts of your inner world to the surface of your self is dangerous, but ultimately revealing of your most human self. However, my reluctance to provide access to the soft, slippery innards of my soul was well justified. Knowing when to flay ourselves is quite tricky. The ones to gently lay you softly and gently are those who taste your briny heart, and can tolerate swallowing you whole. So, who will lie in the casket with you?