Pith

You know how to pretend
you have no heart.  

It's dangerous to wear it, bright
red and soft yellow, out in the furrowed
plots of your green flesh. 

Sometimes the one who cuts you open 
twists each half of you in opposite directions, 
then strikes a knife into that woody globe, 

trying to lift it out clean. But you 
never want to be so easily taken, to be
scooped up, rind scoured, put whole

into the mouth. You hold out sometimes.
Long enough to spurn the blade 
so it twitches, lodges in 
another's skin.