Calluses of the Heart

A woman I used to know.... (many women can relate)

To laboring hands,
dried pastey white
thick and rough
rock-hard and tough,
this heart can be compared.

Years of countless blows
by mouth and by fist.
And with each harsh word spoken
a spirit forms, further broken
as growing numbness rejects all pain.

From wounds come ceaseless scars
overlapping; trapping all emotion.
From deep scarlets to dark greys,
sunken, this heart lays,
a heart turned to stone.