You gave me your heart in a poetical way.
I figuratively hold this anatomically incorrect symbol in my hands…where do I put it?
For though it terrifies me, I know it is precious. I am worried of it…but I can still feel its warmth and I want to keep it close.
I cannot carry it. Absentminded as I am, I will place it somewhere and it will be gone forever.
I cannot keep it in my pocket. It will go through the wash and I will get it back shrunk and shriveled.
Maybe I will open a door in my breast and place it with my own heart…
But that is grotesque.
This perfectly symmetrical, immaculately red symbol cannot sit next to my own, lopsided, beating flesh!
The juxtaposition would unravel the facade and leave me with…what?
Nothing?
A puff of smoke?
A second heart, beating opposite my own, wearing me down?
Or would the disappeared symbol instead free its meaning throughout my body, disintegrating into tingles that run along my spine and down my arms and legs, that make me shiver imperceptibly as my motion is suddenly guarded, and yet pull up at the corners of my mouth, causing me wary warmth, this oxymoronic push-pull
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this feeling that makes me want to fight-or-flight to attack or recede inside myself that starts my adrenaline rushing from unwarranted panic yet also makes me want to freeze time as I close my eyes and smile slightly to bask in the redolent warmth to pull my extremities close in order to let them experience what starts in my chest and then stretch into a star for this feeling to extend its reach to my edges and further
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Then this symbol, this encasement of hard metaphor, becomes unwanted.
Its protection, previously so needed, becomes unbearable.
How can I hold it in my hands, in my pocket, coolly perfect, frozen in shape, knowing what it holds inside?
How can I not grit my teeth through the disquiet, the sweaty palms and surge in my gut, knowing the halcyon happiness that lays beyond?

I will not suffer this symbol to stay intact!
I will scratch lines in its colour!
I will peel its icy layers off one by one!
I will ****** it to the ground, and **** its sweet juices from the cracks!
I will descend upon it until it bursts, its shards transforming sweetly into its message.
Connotation broken into denotation, truth unobscured by this superfluous poetry.
This sensation, this meaning, this feeling, this actuality, this state, this phrase
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this i love you playing across my body running through my hair
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It simultaneously freezes and thaws me.