I want to spend the rest of my life with you

I noticed last year that my heart, the one I used to offer so freely, began to falter. It shrunk small and desolate and retreated to the same corner where I held my most exiled parts— away with this tiny young girl with her head buried behind her knees to her chest, trying to take up as little space as possible. She’s shivering and it isn’t because it i…