The way we describe love-pain – it’s all wrong. An injured heart doesn’t shatter, like volcanic obsidian. It grows, like lava. Under pressure, it becomes heavy and dense and hot.

The weight of an injured heart anchors us to the earth. The mass confers upon us visibility to others. The heat draws creatures to our side. Love-pain connects us, even as we feel we must hide. Love-pain is lava; it changes the landscape as it burns. An injured heart is not weak and brittle. It is the rawest Earth; it is furious creation.

A human heart becomes obsidian only upon death, when the body cools and stills. All we leave behind, in the tumbling soil, is the black mirror, through which those that follow us divine their future love.