I looked over at Noah again. He was chatting with the group about something. I hadn’t changed no matter how many marks I had gotten over the years, but I had changed in the few months I had been with him. I felt a prickling sensation on my chest near my heart. I was scared to look at it. To see another black ring closing in and showing my lost heart or another vine tangling through everything unable to ever be removed. Maybe it would just be something small and sweet, a memento that I could keep if he decided it was time for me to leave. That thought was more comforting than the others, so I worked up the courage to look down.  

A poinsettia had seemingly bloomed right in the center of two thick black rings that had circled my heart for years, but the poinsettia wasn’t black like them. It wasn’t some toxic thing that showed I had finally reached the end of my heart’s limit. It was a shimmering beautiful iridescent color, and it had deep pink in the center and bright blues at the edges. I sat there just staring at it for a while until I slowly reached up and touched it gently. I traced the edges of the petals with my finger, over and over again. I continued to trace over it as I laid back, my hair getting covered in sand and stared up at the sky.