Excavating a Pulse
By the sour lemon light
through dusty shafts
and cavernous gulfs of darkness for miles,
she crouched.
Examining the find
with a paintbrush, not for painting,
but for delicately brushing away debris.
A find such as this coiled shivers
'round her metal spine.
Shivers of the magnitude of discovery.
Shivers filled with memories of what once was.
Echoes from far off darkness
bounced off her body, sonar style,
and were sent reeling backwards into the black veins.
She concentrated all of her effort on cleaning the find-
there...
and there...
so much debris;
layers of earth, hard packed,
crevices and minute holes, filled with tongue cracking dust,
and the strangest of all -
what looked like some form of ancient, metaled chain,
imbedded 'round and 'round and sunk in the vessel,
covered in gems perhaps held of some value, somewhere.
She worked tirelessly
until the object emerged, took shape
like a hand, attached to an arm,
attached to a groaning for life body,
being pulled out of quicksand.
Finally, after hours of solitude
and immensity of detailed labor,
she stood and stretched her back and her legs in a caterpillar arch.
Tandem memories and emotions lined up to meet her
and she shook hands with them one by one
before again dropping to her knees.
She pulled a neatly folded, white cotton, monogrammed handkerchief
out of her back pocket and wrapped the find with shaking fingers.
When she emerged she had a yellow taste on her tongue
from the depths of the earth and one thought only:
"I wonder what everyone will say, when I tell them I found my heart..."
Copyright © Tatyana Carney | Year Posted 2006
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