A love letter to the heartbroken

There’s this crater on Easter Island that I think about more than any human ought to think about any crater. Rano Kau is covered in every color of flowers and filled with water and imagine standing there when it was a volcano, charred and burning, lava-bloody and destructive. You wouldn’t think about the life that was ahead, would you? You would mourn what you had lost.

That’s heartbreak: a burning, gaping hole where the hopes of a life together was, an explosion of grief where before you had a mountain. And I know all you can feel today is the heaving ashes of loss suffocating you but I promise: it gets better. One day, maybe not tomorrow but one day, you’ll wake up and find a flower has grown on your crater. There's something relentless, almost unfair about life's endless push towards surviving, no?

That’s how our bodies are built, isn’t it? Do you remember how it felt the last time one of your bones broke? Pain gets dimmer because humanity is inherently, optimistically geared towards getting hurt. Tonight your chest is heavy and my shoulder awaits your resting head. Tomorrow the rain will water you and the birds will land on you and before you know it the ugly cratered scar of your heartbreak will hold water, grow trees, host birds. I promise.