distance (part twenty-six)

My heart doesn't break.
No one's stolen it for a long, long time. Nobody's wrenched it from my chest; they'd have to get past my steel ribcage.
      Steel cage for a heart of stone.
It's cracked in the past, and you can see where it has,
but no one's dropped it on the cement,
or taken a good swing at it with a bat,
for a while, now.

My guts are another story.
Housed in the soft skin of the belly of this small, dormant beast,
They've been stuffed back in so many times,
in a hurry,
      in fear that someone will see them on the ground
      and decide to strangle me.
      Because someone already so vulnerable is asking for it, right?

I feel everything three fingers below my bellybutton,
this hara that I keep talking about.
Ever since I learned how to properly stomp
and move from my core,
I've been more in tune with my center.

If I said you were this close to pulling them back out again,
my small worries would be justified.
But you aren't, so they aren't.

When I think of crushed pearls,
I feel it at my center.
When I listen to the songs you played in your car on our short-lived travels,
my core glows red hot,
      just long enough for me to enjoy the pleasure of this silly feeling
      before I touch my stone heart to it
      to cool it back down.

A ball of volcanic crust is my center.
A dormant creature is my hara.
A tombstone angel is my heart.
      (There is nothing I desire more than for you to unearth me, rob my grave.)

-Dana Winter