there is a small metal disk lodged under your ribs and above your stomach
It used to be made of sponge, but as the years passed and your bones grew stronger with age and calcium intake, so did it
always hanging heavy and low and giving you a strange grating feeling at your lungs and at the top of your large intestine, forming raw, pussing ulcers
and you notice that when you stare at the barrel of your shotgun it gets hot and bright and seemingly, it grows
and for a small, tiny second, you swear you can feel the flow of your own blood, circulating to your heart, all the way to your fingernails
the small metal disk lodged under your ribs and above your stomach never truly seems to go away or disintegrate or die out
even when you're flapping your hands doing toe raises over a new book or your good friend or a favorite movie
there is a small disk of iron chafing your organs and weighting you down overwhelmingly present in it's living space
you notice, though, that on occasion, the metal twists and liquidizes and comes up your throat, almost as if it were melting, or boiling, or attempting to reach equilibrium
And it's almost as though you can throw it up or spit it out- it's almost as if you can remove the disk bit by bit through bodily excretion
More time passes
It's a year in the future now- you've gotten fatter, been abandoned, found love, shaved your head, got clean, started again, moved houses, moved states, moved countries
however the two things that remain present are
1) Your old friend nesting in your body. It feels as though it's its own organ now, apart of your system, preforming function, containing living tissue with eukaryotes, the possibility of evolution through natural selection- it's quiet, ignorable, still there, yet not quite
2) The old, rusted shot-gun made of the same material, the same heaviness- but the lack of cells, reproduction, organ systems- the very weapon that your father owned, and his father before then, the very heridetary gun that had shot your great grandfather in the temple, the very firearm used to craft the disk in your body, the one you were born with-
you used to skateboard as a kid. There was so much weight, you fell on constant
with scraped knees and dozing into the sky; you saw flash-forewards
of your home
and the grandfather gun dusting in it's case
hearing the clunking of your footsteps down the stairs
a tearing of metal
a ball of lead rolling across concrete- or possibly linolium
a sudden lightness
an empty shell
and 20 healed ulcers
