Poems by Rose

In Their Hands

 

The hardening of the heart began in childhood, 

not all at once, but grain by grain— 

a little limestone learning pressure, 

a little softness schooled by pain. 

 

First came the yelling through the walls, 

then truth turned crooked in their mouths, 

then fingers pinched until they bloodied, 

then palms, then fists, then darker bouts. 

 

Black became blue. 

Blue yellowed underneath the skin. 

And every bruise became a mineral 

the body buried deeper in. 

 

Then abandonment— 

the oldest quarrying of all: 

to learn the hands that built your shelter 

could be the hands that let you fall. 

 

The pressure followed into adolescence. 

Your first no from the one you adored. 

Your first goodbye. 

Your first breakup. 

Your first slammed door. 

 

Then the first one who betrayed you, 

sweet with speech and skilled in lies; 

another little fault line forming, 

another color underneath disguise. 

 

Then came the man with a honeyed glass, 

but gunpowder and whiskey filled the pour— 

they seeped into the marble’s fractures 

and stained what pressure had cracked before. 

 

And still the heart absorbed it— 

heat upon hurt, 

pressure upon pain, 

impurities slipping through each fracture, 

settling slowly into every vein. 

 

Grief became graphite. 

Anger became iron. 

Fear became fault lines 

where tenderness had been. 

 

Until one day 

what once was flesh had finished changing: 

cold, 

veined, 

beautiful perhaps, 

but no longer beating. 

 

Marble. 

 

It was cut from the mountain 

and carried away with heavier stone, 

then shelved for years in a dusty yard— 

hard among hard things, alone. 

 

Buyers passed. 

Some glanced and kept walking. 

Some saw only scars in the slab. 

Some wanted cleaner coloring, 

straighter veins, 

something easier to have. 

 

No one stayed long enough 

to wonder what slept beneath the gray— 

the buried bronze, 

the ghosted green, 

the colors dust had dulled away. 

 

Until one day a sculptor 

 

stopped. 

 

He stood before it silently, 

studying every scar and seam, 

as though the fractures were not failures 

but maps of something still unseen. 

 

Then from his hand 

he doused it with water— 

clear as an eternal spring— 

and watched the sleeping stone grow darker, 

watched hidden colors rise within. 

 

The dust ran down. 

The veins rose vivid. 

Gold glimmered underneath the gray. 

What others called impurity 

became the reason he would stay. 

 

He did not bargain down its value. 

He did not ask what made it scarred. 

He paid its worth, 

bore its weight, 

and carried it home with care. 

 

Inside his studio, 

he did not lift the chisel first. 

 

He studied.

Sketched. 

Marked. 

Measured. 

Then measured once again. 

 

A practiced hand knows marble

remembers everywhere it strained; 

one careless strike along a fracture 

can split what pressure has sustained. 

 

So he learned each fault line faithfully, 

where hammer might meet stone, 

where force could free what waited there, 

and where restraint alone. 

 

Chisel. 

Pause. 

Chisel. 

Listen. 

 

Dust fell softly to the floor. 

Not every blow was meant to break it. 

Some were meant to free what stone had stored. 

 

Then came the polishing. 

 

Slow circles. 

Soft cloth. 

Steady hands. 

Again. 

Again. 

Again. 

 

He polished what the others passed 

until the buried colors shone, 

not sanding scars into surrender, 

not making wounded marble new. 

 

He only let the light fall differently 

across each darkened hue, 

until every vein became visible 

and every fracture carried through. 

 

And slowly, 

under patient hands, 

the stone began to shine— 

not white, 

not flawless, 

not untouched, 

but marked by pressure, heat, and time. 

 

The iron made the amber. 

The graphite made the gray. 

The fractures gave the mineral-rich water 

somewhere to make its way. 

 

What wounded it 

had altered it. 

What altered it 

had made it rare. 

And only someone willing to look closely 

would ever find the colors there. 

 

When the sculptor finally stepped away, 

he did not claim the work as his. 

He did not say, 

“I saved you.” 

He did not say, 

“I made you this.” 

 

He simply looked at what had always waited 

beneath the dust, beneath the years, 

beneath the heat and hammering, 

beneath the hardened layers of fear. 

 

And whispered, 

 

“I saw you.” 

 

Then somewhere deep beneath the marble, 

beneath each vein, beneath each scar, 

something stirred where stone had settled— 

faint, 

then fuller, 

then not so far. 

 

For the sculptor had not given it a heartbeat. 

That was never his to impart. 

 

He had only made it safe enough 

for stone to remember 

 

it was still 

a heart.