you can continue to pour your heart into barrel-rusted men, but you will come up empty, bottomed out, time and again. I know what it’s like to have a soft heart and dream of the stars, warm romance, and raw art, but they don’t want you to speak of the oceans within. and when you begin to apologize for all the nothings you ever did, they will breathe you in; this is oblivion. this is the day you die. you weep. but the thing about a soft heart, an empath in human skin, there is more than meets the eye. there’s so much more than what can ever escape the tongue. but these barrel-rusted men rarely leave the past as it’s etched inside their calloused tin. and your heart, dear girl, is worth far more than an iron-oxide cell.