Sediment

 SEDIMENT

My heart is not a heart.

It is

    a quarry.

A fist-sized continent

torn loose

and lowered

        into the chest-cave

without permission.

It does not beat.

It thuds.

Like a wet stone dropped

into the well of myself

and never

            hearing

                the splash.

There is a frog in my throat.

Not green.

Not alive.

A fossil-frog.

Calcified croak.

A throat full of swallowed storms.

It swells

whenever I try to speak.

Its legs press against my vocal cords

like parentheses

that never close.

(

My ribs are riverbanks

holding back nothing.

Everything in me is silt.

Experience has weight.

It settles.

Layer by layer.

Year by year.

Uncried tears becoming sedimentary rock.

I am a body

learning geology.

Every memory

a pebble.

Every regret

a boulder.

Every love

a cathedral of limestone

dragging me

        downward.

Down

    through mud-thick days,

        through algae-light thoughts,

            through the slow churn

                of almost.

I sink politely.

I sink with manners.

I sink without spectacle.

The sludge does not resist me.

It recognizes its own.

And somewhere below language,

below lungs,

below the place where frogs fossilize—

my heart rests

heavy

perfectly

still

like a stone

that has finally

accepted

the bottom.