Handle With Care

My Beautiful Mistress:

Close your eyes and hold out your hands. I want to give you something.

Now, before you look I need to tell you a few things.

This is old and kind of beat up. If this was a car, in fact, it would be a junker. Ready to be scrapped. It’s lit­tle, and bro­ken. But still good. Yeah; still good.

Well, I think so. I hope so.

I want you to have it.

I know you could have any one of these you want. I know there are thou­sands — mil­lions — bet­ter than this one.

I hope you’ll choose mine.

You can look now:

It’s my heart.

It’s noth­ing spe­cial — it’s old and beat­en up and scarred. It’s dam­aged goods. You won’t be able to show it off to any of your friends. I wish you could, but I’m sure you’d be embar­rassed to.

Here’s the thing, though — it’s the only one I have. But I still want to give it to you.

It’s not just the only one I have. It’s the only one I will ever have.

I wish I’d known that a long time ago. If I had, I would have done a lot of things differently.

So what I have to offer you is less than it could be. But it’s still the best I have.

Sor­ry about the dust. I’ve had it hid­den away for a long time. I was afraid some­body would steal it or break it more.

Doing this is scary. You’re hold­ing some­thing frag­ile. You could destroy it eas­i­ly; you could break it even if you just dropped it or put it down some­where and for­got about it.

But I trust you. Besides, it’s bet­ter to give some­thing to some­one who knows how to use it and take care of it than it is to just stash it away and let it go to waste.

I hope you can take bet­ter care of it than I have. Maybe it will get bet­ter as you clean it up and nur­ture it, just like a neglect­ed pup­py. Maybe you can get it to grow. You’re good at that sort of thing.

Thank you for giv­ing my heart a home.