what is a quarter and a piece of gum worth?

Loving you is easy. I slip into something vulnerable and wrap my hands around your neck, rubbing our hearts against each other. It's funny that the most vulnerable part of your body is in the front of you, where others can touch it. It's like you made an incision on the skin barricade around my heart and pulled it to the surface through the hole you made in my chest for examination. You held my heart in your hands and kissed it gently and I never asked for it back. Loving someone is easy, it's the giving of your own soul, your insides that is hard. People take pieces and fragments of who you are and shove them in their pockets where the fall out during their morning run. That's what you did, took small fragments of who I was and scattered them umongst the black pavement like rose pettles in a wedding. I had parts and what were once wholes missing where I used to be complete. You no longer kissed my heart gently, you neglected it slowly so I asked for it back. You no longer had it. You sold it to the boy down the street for a quarter and a piece of gum. I forgot that I was supposed to protect the one thing that was important to me. I forgot to tell myself how important I was, to never let my guard down. Instead I sold my heart and soul to you for nothing. I have never been good at bargaining... losing everything for what I thought was something.
-M.D.L