“I miss you,” she said, her voice laden with longing.
sifting through syllables and filtering fiction, she sought her belonging.
flesh and bones and layers of love between her palms,
emptied chests of memories and hand-written celebratory psalms.

they flew to the fire under her hand, listen as they crackle and burn –
mercilessly licked by the tongues of time, as hourglasses overturned.
piles of sand scattered on the ground, indents of fingertips lay –
echoes of a touch once lingered, but then lost their way.

a kiss shared here trapped in this corner, a smoldering gaze there.
a heart shattered upon this stone, a one last wistful stare.
and now added to the list of lost things, upon the floor is she;
eyes open wide, hazel and bright, though nothing more she sees.

the doctors came in a hurry, like vultures to their prey –
a blistering of white coats, sterile scents and gray.
her report was released a few days later, spat out by some machine;
the details told everything, the crime scene bleached and clean.

“a useless heart,” the report said, “was the cause of her
falling down to the ground, lifeless; broken and dead.”

“one missing finger where a ring had snapped off under duress,
a haemorrhage in the brain from sheer insurmountable stress,
four broken blood vessels leading to the heart.
curious is that the heart never worked from the start.”

“deceased is she: a shell, long gone and cast away.
date of death undetermined, it was certainly not today.
rotted away was the heart, long before she bled.
it had long stopped beating; she was already dead.”