the girl of fluid and stone

there’s a girl that lives inside me she’s all squished and mushed up against my spine. deep deep within my core. deep enough that she feels safe that she feels held that she feels warm and most of the time she does this is the perfect place for her it feels the safest until it doesn’t it’s hard to tell exactly what makes her feel just that way maybe its many things or nothing at all but perhaps what it is doesn’t matter so much she’s stacked between memories and pain that seem to only continue to pile up on each other, battling and screeching for the little sliver of space they’re allotted inside the weavings of her bone and discs vertebrae and fluid of a spinal cord and when they get too loud they scream in the little girl’s ears they take over the space that makes her feel held that makes her feel cozy and warm they yell and squeal so loudly that the girl has no room to breathe and the one that holds her can’t her over the piercing cries of her own backbone of agony and yet if she’d just go deep enough, past all of the sludge to see the one on the other side, she’d learn that there’s really nothing scary about it at all she doesn’t ask for a lot she doesn’t need a lot but when she does, it is buried amidst the simplest gestures “just move for me” she begs, small whispers to the dark “just a little bit. so that I have enough space to breathe” there’s a girl that lives inside my core she feels foreign to the one in my arms and legs: the bouncy girl the giggly girl she feels far from the quiet one of my core but she’s not they’re two parts of a whole many parts of a whole neither is more valuable than the other yet without one we’d fall apart my limbs would just dance alone on the cold ground until they lost all energy to dance at all my core would just be still with no way to not be “just move. if only a little bit. use your other parts to let me breathe. i am not scary, just hear what i need”