Heart of Stone

They say I’ve got

a heart of stone—

like I woke up this way,

cold from the beginning,

untouched by anything

that ever tried to reach me.

But stone

isn’t born hard.

It becomes that way

through pressure,

through weather,

through years

of standing in storms

with no shelter.

People see the surface

and stop there.

They don’t see

how many times

I tried to love softly,

how many times

I opened my hands

just to watch

everything good

slip through them.

So I learned.

Learned how to close off

before something

could get close enough

to ruin me again.

Learned how to act indifferent,

how to keep my voice steady,

how to pretend

nothing touches me anymore.

But pretending

and feeling nothing

aren’t the same thing.

Because even stone

remembers pressure.

Even stone

can crack.

And underneath

everything hardened in me—

under the distance,

the silence,

the walls I built

to survive—

there’s still a heart there.

Just one

that got tired

of bleeding

every time

it tried to be soft.