Hand to Heart

Sometimes I place the palm of my hand against my heart and press hard like I'm trying to keep everything from falling out.
Like I'm keeping myself from shattering.
Feeling is like breathing, it comes and goes, but when I think of you, the feeling stills and I find I've been holding my breath for days.
What strange creatures these shadows have taken on, so molded together against the shapes of my eyelids.
When I cry, I can see them through the aching, the heaving, and I remember what living is like.
How dangerous we have become, my friend.
Kindred in the crafting of ourselves.
Like origami, we fold our faces to fit into the day.
The bend of the lip into a smile.
The unwrinkling of the eyebrows
The smoothing of the spine so that it doesn't appear that a weight resides there, growing heavy with each unspoken word, each misshapen hope, each failure.
They will never find us here in this heart of yours.
These beasts of burden attach themselves to the hollow parts of you, but here in the star-painted ceilings of your ventricles which shine with constellations of your child-self so joyous in the hide-and-seek forest, you, my dear, are safe.
Place the center of your hand, a hand that once was so small it could barely be grasped, and set it against the center of you where spirit is kept, where so great a pain has marred you and left its mark. Place the palm there and feel the beating, the pace of you, who yells that they'll never catch you. You who once ran with small legs and big eyes and hands so open that fear couldn't be held. Place the palm there and know that beneath you, within you, all around you, is a life so magnificent that sometimes you have to press hard to keep it.