Love in someone else's language

Somewhere inside of me there is a little girl, her hair in waves and her heart in shambles.  I have ignored her for so long that I no longer remember how to pull her to safety. What I do remember is sobbing the night of the tornado, the shutters clattering and the windows shaking. I remember the heat, the way it lay still and thick across the top bunk of the bed. I remember that small bedroom, that there was no solace, no quiet, no escape. I remember, and this is the sharpest part of all, that it wasn’t all bad. Sometimes she made cinnamon rolls from canned biscuits, the spoon hitting the seam until it spilled out speaking love in someone else’s language. That she searched for me not once but three times, which implies that she cared. That she couldn’t sleep until I had been found and put back to bed. So much easier to think that she didn’t love me but also not true. How, then, does love look? How to shape and twist love into something that makes sense? If not protection, not care, then what? Instinct, perhaps. Obligation, I suppose.  She is sitting in her apartment at this moment, I imagine. Sitting and smoking, the oxygen cord twisted around one ankle. I am ashamed that I don’t love her. When I think of her, then, now, anytime, my heart becomes a three ton tank and nothing can gain entrance.