Eureka.

The reason I jump, too fast:
I believe:
If anyone should break my heart, it should be me. Not circumstance nor callous people.

I should stop doing this.
Other people - save one, and he is long gone, now - have been far more careful with my heart than I have ever been with it.
I throw it up into the air and forget to catch it.
I box it when it gets strong enough to soar.
I push it when it wants pulled. Open it when it wants closed.
Reopen healed wounds and leave them bleeding, disgusted.

Only I do this, no one else does it to me.
I really, really should stop.

This isn't really an ahha! moment though. I've known these things for years now.
And still, I do it.
Thornbird, etc.

Love, what else.

Now should have a million names,
one for each of the infinite directions.
And we should marry them all off:
paired, at last, they'd stop screaming and fighting
get bored
make love
sleep.
And I'd have some peace, at last.

But that's not what I really want, or I'd have it, by now.

Last night I wrote my wedding vows in my head. Silently, in the kitchen, while the Man was upstairs being sick with a stomach bug. They spilled out, in the space between the bean plants on the window sill and the kitchen counter. I had a light blue ceramic bowl in my hands, full of bright red soup.
I imagined saying them very softly, underneath the mango tree at home. I imagined the grass on the lawn. The softly cobalt sky. I looked straight into his eyes, and said, I love you. I love you. I love you. And I promise I will never stop.
I tried to change the never. Superstitious. Unholy word. Awful, if you break a never promise. The word is hurled back at you and it shatters into your face - You promised you would never...
But I couldn't change it.
A tear pricked the corner of my eye, and I said, out loud, Wow! Sentimental ass!
But the tear always wins, and it rolled down my cheek, fast, and into the soup.
He ate it, and I didn't tell him.
He has absolutely everything now.
Which terrifies me. I keep trying to change it. But I couldn't.