break my heart

prologue

I'd worked hard to create the illusion of a perfect relationship; it was an immaculate and beautiful garden to anyone who walked through it. Each flower was perfectly kept, dying stems were snipped away, weeds tugged out by the roots. The cobbled paths were swept clean and trees rooted firmly, their branches flush with leaves and stretching into the clouds. To foreign eyes, there was no room for imperfections.

I'd always thought I was smart enough to see the warning signs, but I was wrong. As my garden slowly went up against the elements, I was too focused upon saving each flower as it fell rather than evaluating the damage done. As I cradled the cracked stem of a sunflower, I turned a blind eye against the relentless wind that was relentlessly stripping the beautiful trees bare and forcing them to their knees. Slowly, I continued to turn to the next damaged plant, so that I couldn't see the destroyed garden that was in my wake, or rather, the damage I chose to ignore.

I'd thought that I knew what love is, but I was mistaken. When the gentle flutter of butterflies in the garden morphed into something dark, whose jagged teeth latched on to any life remaining, I let it remain. I sat and watched as gradually the garden, once rich with life, shifted into a barren wasteland. And when the creature had nothing left to feed upon, I offered up my soul.

I'd thought that I would have known when to quit, but in the end, I wasn't strong enough to abandon the garden I'd worked too hard on. Once my soul was gone, there was nothing left in the garden besides my fragile, porcelain heart. I cradled it in my hands, praying that it could be enough for him to want to bring life back, to allow us to flourish once more. But instead, I just got my heart shattered amongst the cracked flowerbeds, the pieces forever scattered amongst the dry soil. Perhaps I was just asking for this to happen.

I felt like I'd lost, despite no one else trying to win.