Fragments of Cassandra

I love like someone begging a flame to stay alive while standing alone in the storm,

watching people warm their hands on me
from beneath their umbrellas

while I slowly burned away.

I let people in before they knock.
Before they earn it.
Before my heart can even ask,
“Will they stay gentle with me?”

And maybe that is my tragedy.
Or maybe it is the holiest thing about me.

Because I have always loved
like the ocean loves shipwrecks 
completely,
without asking whether they came to stay
or simply to survive the storm.

People arrive in my life half drowning,
saltwater in their lungs,
grief stitched into their skin,
and somehow I always believe
I can keep them breathing.

So I give them pieces of myself
like blankets in winter.
Take my warmth.
Take my sleep.
Take the softer parts of me too.
I can survive the cold.

And I do this over and over,
until I cannot tell
where their wounds end
and mine begin.

I become the bridge.
The shelter.
The person who listens too long,
stays too late,
forgives too quickly.

The person who says,
“No, let me help,”
while quietly bleeding through the hands.

And every time,
I swear I will finally learn.

I swear I will build walls thick enough
to keep my own heart safe this time.
That I will stop mistaking broken people
for abandoned homes I am meant to restore.

But then someone looks at me
like they have never been loved gently before,
and suddenly every locked door inside me
flies open again.

Because despite everything,
I still want to believe in people.

Even after friendships
that left like thieves in the night.
Even after lovers
who held my heart carefully
only long enough to learn where it was fragile.
Even after becoming too much
for people who once begged me
to love them loudly.

And maybe I did love too loudly.
Maybe my heart arrives before my mind can protect it.
Maybe I attach meaning
to moments other people survive casually.

But I refuse to become cold
just because the world rewarded me
for warmth with abandonment.

I refuse to turn into someone
who withholds love
simply because others mishandled it.

There is enough cruelty already.

If my downfall is caring too deeply,
then let it be written honestly:
I was never ashamed of loving people fully.

Not once.

I will not apologize
for the way my soul reaches outward.
For the way I see hurting people
and instinctively say,
“Come here. Rest.”

Even if they leave afterward.
Even if they forget me.
Even if I remain standing in the ruins
holding all the tenderness
they no longer wanted to carry.

Because I would rather be wounded
than become incapable of love.

I would rather ache from feeling too much
than spend my life
unable to feel anything at all.

There are nights
where the feeling becomes too large for a body to hold.

Where grief does not arrive as sadness,
but as silence.

My hands go cold.
My limbs feel borrowed.
Every emotion crashes into me at once
until my mind cannot separate them anymore;
love,
fear,
loneliness,
rage,
exhaustion,
all screaming together
until suddenly
I cannot hear anything at all.

And that numbness terrifies me most.

Because some days
the pain feels so endless
I catch myself wondering
how peaceful it would be
to simply stop carrying it.

To finally unclench every wound.
To let the ache go quiet.
To disappear before the world
can hollow me out any further.

But even then,
some fragile part of me remains.

Some trembling piece of my soul
still choosing to stay,
even while drowning beneath the weight of itself.

And maybe that is the cruelest kind of hope;
the kind that survives
even when you are too tired
to call it hope anymore.

So maybe I am not the lesson people learn.
Maybe I am the place they survive.

And maybe one day
someone will arrive
who does not treat my heart
like a temporary refuge from the storm;
but will hold the umbrella over my head,
When it pours

Someone who stays.
Someone who sees all this love inside me
and does not run from its weight.

Until then,
I will remain soft.

Not because the world was soft with me;
but because I was never meant
to mirror its cruelty.


Be’ahava,
Cassandra