a motorcycle heart

I want my heart to be in tandem with someone who will let me show them all of me. All the flaws and all the insecurities. All the damage that has been done to my heart, I believe that someone can patch it up and make it like new. I believe in love and I will never stop believing, even when the road stretches endlessly before me and the horizon seems to hold nothing but more asphalt and empty sky.

My heart revs like a motorcycle engine in the silence of my chest, restless and powerful, waiting for the right moment to surge forward. It idles now, rumbling with potential energy, with all this love that has nowhere to go. Sometimes I can feel it vibrating through my entire body, this machine of emotion that was built for speed, for passion, for the kind of velocity that only comes when two souls collide at full throttle. But I’m parked on the side of this long road, watching other riders pass by in pairs, their engines harmonizing in a way that makes the air itself seem to sing.

I’ve always been captivated by tales of limitless affection and wild escapades, like the infamous duo Bonnie and Clyde, or the intense chemistry between Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson’s character in ‘Natural Born Killers.’ Harley Quinn and the Joker. Those types of passionate and messy and raw emotional love. The kind that doesn’t apologize for being too much, too intense, too consuming. The kind that burns rubber and leaves marks on the pavement, evidence that something real happened here, that two people moved through this world together with such force that they couldn’t help but leave traces behind.

These stories resonate in my bones because they understand something fundamental about desire: that real love isn’t polite or careful or measured. It’s a highway with no speed limit, a journey where you don’t know what’s around the next curve but you lean into it anyway, trusting that the person driving will accelerate when needed, will brake slowly enough so you can lean into the curbe of the road together. Arms wrapped around a waist that holds your life and heart inside that ribcage.

I’m puzzled by the psychology behind my desire for love so deeply because I will overlook someone’s cruelty, or even lack of love for me. I will accept that they only love how much I love them. I’ve pulled over for hitchhikers who had no intention of sharing the journey, who just wanted a ride for a few miles before they disappeared into the landscape again. I’ve revved my engine for people who were content to watch from the shoulder, who admired the gleam of chrome and the promise of adventure but never threw their leg over the seat, never wrapped their arms around my waist and said, “Let’s go.”

Perhaps it’s because so many people in life fail to love others for their true selves, making it a rare and beautiful thing when they do. Most people are driving sedans on the highway of life, practical and safe, following the speed limit and staying in their lane. They’re not looking for someone with a motorcycle heart, someone whose entire being thrums with the need to feel the wind and taste the freedom and experience every sensation at its maximum intensity. They want comfortable, predictable, easy. They want cruise control, not the constant engagement that comes from gripping the handlebars and feeling every shift in the road beneath you.

But I am as rare as they come. I’m vintage, custom-built, one of a kind. My heart isn’t mass-produced. It’s been run over and set on fire and skidded on more asphalt than most have ever felt with their bare

hands. My love is my experience. My heart is strong and I’ve survived, every person who’s dented the chrome, every road I’ve traveled alone. The engine has been rebuilt more times than I can count, but it still runs, still purrs with that distinctive sound that says this machine was made for something extraordinary. I hope to find him, the rider who hears that engine note and recognizes it as the sound he’s been listening for his entire life.

I know he exists. I feel him and yet I don’t know his name. Somewhere on this long road, there’s another rider whose heart revs at the same frequency as mine. He’s out there leaning into curves, pushing the limits, refusing to settle for the scenic route when he knows there’s a road less traveled that leads somewhere worth going. Our engines are tuned to the same pitch, and one day, when the conditions are right and the road brings us to the same stretch of highway, we’ll hear each other before we even come into view.

I don’t yearn to love someone who is flawless, as I am far from perfect. I need a broken man to make me whole. I need someone whose motorcycle has been in crashes, whose paint is scratched, whose chrome has lost some of its shine. I need someone who’s had to rebuild their engine in the middle of nowhere with nothing but determination and borrowed tools. I need someone who understands that the beauty isn’t in the pristine showroom model but in the machine that’s been tested, that’s been pushed to its limits and survived, that carries the evidence of every mile in its very structure.

I need my soulmate, the other rider who knows what it means to keep going even when the road gets rough, when the rain starts falling and visibility drops to nothing, when every rational voice says to pull over and wait it out but something deeper says keep moving, keep believing, keep searching. He’s out there somewhere with his own scarred heart and his own collection of stories about wrong turns and dead ends and times he thought he’d never find his way back to the main road.

It is a daunting task to find someone willing to reveal their true self. Most people wear helmets with tinted visors, hiding behind layers of protection, never letting you see the vulnerability in their eyes when they talk about their fears or their dreams or the things that broke them.

But I don’t want someone who’s afraid of being seen. I want someone who’ll take off the helmet and let me see every scar, every line of experience etched into their face. I want someone who’ll show me the dents in their tank and tell me the story behind each one. I want someone who understands that being broken doesn’t mean being worthless. For me, it means being real, being human, being someone who’s actually lived instead of just existing safely on the side of the road.

I don’t pray to God, I live for love. That one day I can find inspiration in someone else and feel love in a physical form, rather than feel inspired to write about it. I pray to the road itself, to the forces that bring riders together, to whatever cosmic mechanism determines which paths cross and which run parallel forever. I send my yearning out like exhaust fumes, hoping they’ll drift on the wind and reach him wherever he is, hoping he’ll catch the scent of my longing and know to start riding in my direction.

Because right now, all I have are words.

I will go to sleep a broken woman and dream about a broken man. I will sleep forever, because I don’t want to be half a human. I don’t want to be broken and missing parts of my soul. In my dreams, I’m always on that long road, and the asphalt stretches out silver in the moonlight like a promise. My motorcycle is beside me, patient and faithful, waiting for the moment when I find him and we finally start the journey we were meant to take together. In my dreams, I can hear another engine in the distance, getting closer, and my heart begins to rev in response, recognizing something familiar in that sound.

I want love to heal me. I want to love someone and heal them. I want to find the other broken rider and discover that our damaged parts fit together in a way that makes us both more whole than we ever were separately. Two rebuilt engines running in tandem, two scarred riders who understand that the crashes are part of the story, that the breakdowns are what teach you how the machine really works, that being broken and repaired makes you stronger than never being tested at all.

I know he’s out there. I know my heart belongs to someone out there, even though we haven’t met yet, even though I don’t know his name or his face or the specific shape of his scars. I know it like when the sun disappears over the horizon, the way I know the sun will rise even in the darkest part of the night. It’s not faith in the religious sense, it’s faith in the mechanics of the universe, in the way pieces are meant to find each other, in the way two hearts can rev at the same frequency even when they’re separated by miles and time and circumstance.

I just can’t find him, but I hope he’s looking for me too. I hope he’s refused to settle for riders who don’t match his pace, who don’t understand the language of speed and freedom and passionate, messy, raw emotional love. I hope he’s as rare as I am, as broken and alone as I.

(i wrote something a while back and recently

re read it. it inspired me to write more and edit it more and pour more of my gasoline into

this tank i call my outlet. i hope you enjoy)