How to disappear a heart
Cover the walls with lies, add words jumbled together, sentences torn apart and stapled back. Here
are walls covered with facts. Invent new meanings to what it means
to have a beating heart. Pull down foundations. Dig until your fingernails bleed, attach the broken
pieces to the new walls. Your body will be made of leftover construction scraps. Do not
fret. There are no more organs to redistribute to the people. The people have forgotten
what it feels like to be made of touch. Build up new walls. Step on iron-crusted heads and
scrap entire portions of this city. Forget cities are made of dialogues and whispers as if language
smells of corroded speech. Forget languages have meaning beyond the lines
you can see on the map. Bear in mind, a heart is a piece no one has
ever seen before, do not try to describe it, do not try to speechify the gaps. Tell people
you have not seen yours in a while. Tell people you never had one in the first place, that hearts are
overrated, that chests are hollowed by choice when we are all born. Tell people.
Fran Fernández Arce is a Chilean poet currently living in the intersection between Santiago, Chile, and Suffolk, England. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, The Poetry Review, and Lighthouse, among others.