When you get sick your body has white blood cells to protect itself.

The phagocytes will engulf the pathogen, the thing that’s plaguing your body
and digest it, obliterate it completely.

And then the lymphocytes will produce antigens and some of them will stick
to the disease, screaming,
‘It’s here! The danger is here!’

And then the phagocytes will engulf it.
It’s just that easy

(most of the time).

But the best part
is that your body can make
memory cells
and they remember perfectly
how to fight the disease,
how to kill it off before
it has the chance to affect you
the next time you come near it.

I’m learning these methods of self-preservation in emotional terms very slowly.
I’m building up my mind’s own immune system.
I’m reminding myself of the pain of last time every time I find myself falling in love with
a stranger’s walk or the sloping shoulders of the boy on the bus that remind me of sledging in the winter
and I’m sending the warning signals to my heart and I’m telling it to stop -
stop wanting, stop needing,
stop beating.

If only there were a way
to protect your heart
without shutting it down completely.