Heartwood
- Rylie Martin
- Jul 23
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 24
Maybe
you mistook me
for a pebble,
meant to be skipped.
Now
that you’ve
cracked me
wide open,
can you see
I was always
a geode?
My toothbrush
still lives
beside yours.
Because every time
I left,
I never imagined
not returning.
I told you
I was a boomerang.
You never disclosed to me
that you were a frisbee.
I wonder
whether you’ve moved it.
Or whether
it’s still waiting
better than I am.
Your silence
feels like
a reckoning.
The bird I gave you
still uses your shoulder
as a lean-to.
A little birdie told me
she still bites you.
At least one of us knows
what to dowith hurt.
Could you still
pinpoint the mole
behind my ear?
Curious
how quickly
someone can chart
your body.
Even more curious,
imagining
someone else
learning the map
while your compass
points toward
a new north.
How many people
have wanted me.
And how few
I’ve reached for.
Loving you
was never
settling.
It was foraging.
Anyone can pick.
Few know
what is safe
to carry home.
Some berries
nourish.
Others
only mimic
sweetness.
One mushroom
becomes dinner.
Another
becomes regret.
The woods
are full
of lookalikes.
Survival
depends on
discerning.
Anyone can pick,
but not everyone
trusts themselves
enough to.
So you deliberate
over the fruits
of the forest
until nature
chooses
for you—
until your options
ripen
and rot
before your eyes.
No need
to fear
the wrong choice
when indecision
can guarantee
starvation instead:
the slow famine
of everything
your body
ached for,
yet you
refused
to gather.
Call me a sap.
Go on,
laugh.
I won’t begrudge you that.
But trees
count
each year,
and the years I loved you
grew into the rings
beneath my bark.
Even as I grow taller,
you still reside
somewhere
inside my trunk.
I didn’t want
to be another
Because I don’t know
how to love you
halfway.
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