Bizarre Advice

You shouldn't get too close to people,
She told me.
That's bizarre advice,
I thought.
Don't marry someone you love too much,
She said,
Voice mingling with the insect static of a warm night.
Motherly advice,
Shared over cups of steaming tea.

My eyebrows knit together first in frustration,
Then sadness.
This.
This was a person who once loved too much.
This was a woman who had been wounded.
My bones felt heavy.
The absurd truth of her words
Settled like rocks in the pit of my stomach.

Better to have loved
Than to have never loved at all,
We say.
Until the hurt comes,
A thousand piercing arrows
A twisting in the gut.

I don't know which is better.
We all hurt one another
Inevitably.
Irrevocably.
Incessantly.

We hurt one another with our love.
We break each other with our silence.