One more thing to forget (A Prose Poem)

Published on Tuesday, 9 November 2010

One more thing to forget (A Prose Poem)

It fell off the sack, on the way from the morgue to the graveyard. It was not a leg like ours. Ours were smooth, and soft, innocent. But that one had all the signs of being old, it had muscles that must have taken years to build. Time and pressure were its builders. And hunger? Maybe. And other struggles of the living? Sure. It had concentrated strength everywhere, wanting to explode. Blood vessels were like rusty electric cables. A worker's leg? Could be. Who else would sacrifice a leg like that? It was just resting there, on the tarred street, wet from the fog. It was still very early in the morning. People barely started to come out, not knowing what they will find. Like the street, it had cracks, like it was scratched with glass nails. Cracks full of thickened blood. The walls of the cracks were soggy-white, dead. It was beyond dream, beyond all possibilities. It had a hole like it was stabbed with a shovel, a hole with no end. What could one find down there? It walked a long way, to get there. It was not the leg of a novice. No, it was not. Who cut it? And with what? How do you cut a leg like that from above the kneecap? So smooth, so perfect, so beautiful! Was it from the worker's protest? A stamp of police brutality? We heard the gunshots, the day before. They had to cut it off to save the man? What man? How would a worker learn to live without a leg? What was attached to the rest of the body, less than twelve hours ago, was sleeping naked, alone, while everyone watched, from the border of a circle.