A child's heart

A child’s heart
will tell you a story.

A child’s heart,
in its urn,
will tell you the child
did not grow
to be old.

A child’s heart,
smuggled out of its body,
is preserved like a fossil,
is a silent stone.

A stone remembers
what history does not.
Houses are built upon stones
that are built upon stones.
History is a stone,
in the hand of a child,
waiting to be thrown.
History is a child
that is told to keep quiet.

The child sits in a corner,
waiting.

History will tell you stories
but a heart will tell you
only what it knows.

A child’s heart
will remind you
of what is lost.
A child’s heart
will remind you
of what remains.

History is not always
words and pictures,
monuments and
buildings.

Sometimes history
is just this:
a child’s heart in its urn,
waiting to tell you a story,
to show you why
and how
a heart turns to stone.


Alexis Lateef (Western Australia)