Highly Commended in the 2020 Dunedin UNESCO Robert Burns Poetry Competition youth section - Rap Like Robbie

                                                    1000-piece jigsaw

vein to heart to artery
this is what it was
the days in the sea
the sun playing tag with the water
smiling
grinning
laughing in joy
a joy that liquidised our frozen blood
and made them go from
vein to heart to artery

i didn’t want to dance on the moon
or to tie a glossy ribbon
around the earth and stick it on my window
all i wanted was to spin with the molecules
to learn how to fix myself
like a 1000-piece jigsaw

300 pieces   when you wrapped me in a thick wool blanket, an invisible blanket that glowed                        with emotions, emotions that gushed out from your transparent heart, i knew i’m                      never gonna leave you

600 pieces   when they told me that the moon that solar eclipses weren’t worth it, so the                               diffusing particles of happiness will reach us into the dense water, to tickle our                         nerve cells, i knew i’m never gonna leave you

900 pieces   when they started marking boundaries so that we can live on our own at last                            without speed boats spiking their rotors in an unstopping tsunami of decibels                          and selfie sticks licking the water, i knew i’m never gonna leave you

999 pieces   they came. in a boat. a commercial schooner. a one with paint fighting with the                        rust. harpoons. or spears. i don’t know. hey, there’s a biggie. come on quick. a                        solar eclipse. red blood strangling the water. i saw the puncture wound, how it                          drained out your heart, everything inside you, like air sucking out of a pumped                        balloon. they dragged you, your lifeless carcass. my heart hurled into a vacuum,                      where nerve cells were injected with a coma. my insides crumbling in a                                    landslide of silent explosions.

999 pieces smashed
all hiding in random places
dismantling the multi-coloured picture
in the box of the jigsaw
the picture that is now becoming black and white
my heart in a blender that doesn’t have an off button
neurons trying to connect
not knowing that everything has collapsed
in an inward earthquake
that contracted haemoglobin
until they vanished into nothing
a void that doesn’t know what

vein      to      heart     to     artery      is