To: Dr Woodbridge, Assistant Deputy Coroner for the District of Cherwell
by and published in Edition Nine of Pomegranate
You won’t remember the weight of it held
in your warm gloved hand. I am going to ask anyway.
I suppose this is an inevitability, dealing
with death as you do. I don’t necessarily want
an answer, or if I do, I want a lie. I don’t want
it to have been as heavy as mine, nor its beating
to have stopped because of a misplaced sense
of defiance. Perhaps it beat on, bloodless and baggy,
but I want you to say only that it weighs as much as
you’d expect; no more, no less. That a heart is nothing more
than chambers, holds nothing more than blood.
Beats for nothing but itself until it stops.
Sophie F Baker
Sophie F Baker is 25, and a recent graduate of the Creative Writing MA at Newcastle University. She has had poems published in Smiths Knoll, Horizon Review and ABCtales Magazine, and continues to prioritise writing over too many other things to mention.