Pieces of my heart

It was a little too mundane, even plebeian

One could say

The cleaver’s hacking of the deadened joint

A commonplace enough event

In any roadside butcher’s shop.


One hardly smelt the blood spattered

Threadbare face he wore

As he struck with insensate swoops.

One barely registered the entrails and the gizzard

And pieces of a heart, still throbbing

Lying in clumped lumps – lesser meat for lesser folk.



I must hurry out in the clean sunshine

Dip my eyes in the burning glare

Up to the roots of my burning toes

Still that throbbing in those

Pieces of my heart.



I will seek my reimbursement where the peepal leaves shudder

In the cloud-winds that whip the grasses of boulder strewn hills

That purple my horizon.

I will walk. I will watch. I will sometimes even touch.



But never to feel. Never to feel. The need

That feeds like blind gastropods that worm up from the sodden earth.

The sodden earth where I lie buried. Hair, teeth and limbs.

And of course those pieces of my heart

Still throbbing, but only just. But only just.



I must hurry out in the clean sunshine

Dip my eyes in the burning glare

Up to the roots of my burning toes

Still the throbbing in those

Pieces of my heart.


by Rita Putatunda