Carry Me

When I was little my dad always told me, "Lady Bug, no matter what happens, no matter how hurt you are, no matter how sick you are, you gotta use that big heart of yours to love. Cause you know what happens when a big heart doesn't love?" To which I'd always nod my head no, even though I eventually had the answer memorized. "Well, I'll tell you then. When a big heart, like yours, stops loving it starts to shrink. And it shrinks and shrinks till there's nothing left. And how do you love without a heart?" "You can't!" I'd interject. "That's right, Lady Bug, you can't. So you never stop loving." "I'll never stop," I would whisper into my dads shirt as I hugged him. "Good," he would whisper back as he placed a kiss on the top of my head. What I realized later in life was that my promise wasn't as easy to keep as I thought it would be. Cause now life happened, I'm hurt, I'm sick and it's getting really hard to love. I think my heart might be shrinking.