Operating with half a heart,
I labor at getting through the day.
Steps that were light and brisk yesterday,
now made with the weight of thousands
of lives, when the load of one
would have been enough to release
the Grand Inquisitor of my soul
with his flaming questions.

Finding I can still manage
with this piece of a heart, I continue:
preparing dinner, tending my herb garden,
putting words on paper.
Words - no longer mine,
but echoes of voices
vanished into a vacuum of devastation -
voices that took part of this heart
with them into that dark space
wrapped in a catechism that offers no answers.

This fractional heart still pumps
but with a rhythm more sober and deliberate now
as it seeks a pathway
to some fragment of wholeness.

Copyright © Susan Love Fitts, 2001