The heart of what it is we want to say

is always the heart of the question, isn’t it?

One that’s difficult to answer except perhaps
in the form of another question: that is, we feel it

there, lodged in the space close to the gut,
which is just fingers away from the heart,

and so really they might as well be the same
barometer of feeling or non-feeling,

there being no easy half measures,
no in-betweens— Either you eat the fruit

or you leave it in the tree, either you leave
the slug on the leaf or reach for the sear

of salt, either you leave the bullet shell
lodged long near the spine, or risk forced

entry— there being no real argument that doesn’t
engage that space in the center of us all, that space

where a seed might grow into thought, into song,
into a child, into speech, into a reckoning.

In response to Via Negativa: Writer of Color.