When they tipped the basket of heads,
collected at the base of the guillotine
and they tumbled forth like the
awkward unsteady steps of a toddler,
the eyes moved,
teeth bit,
and chewed at the weave of the basket.
One mouth, they say, bit down on another’s ear
and wouldn’t let go.
Two men, their hands strong,
were unable to separate them.
Faces twisted in agony,
their tongues swelling and greying
from the tip back to the throat.
They also say the heads still moved a day later
when they were dumped in the lime
far from the bodies
they had once so intimately known.
Fingers and toes unmoving
the body dead
but the head still alive somehow
lips pursing,
eyes closing and opening
still waiting
waiting
watching for death.
These are the things we do,
these horrors and pains that we do
and then history re-writes.
We lay by our loves at night
slow breathing and pray
our lips pursing
eyes closing and opening
not me. Please.
Not you, either.
–Ally Malinenko