Shame…
have you no heart?
You stand there, clothed in reason, armored in excuses,
speaking of necessity as if it were virtue.
But I have watched you
watched the stillness in your eyes
when another trembled.
There was no flicker. No fracture.
No human pause.
They say “He has no heart”
when a man turns away from suffering,
when mercy knocks and finds no door,
when the cry of another is treated as noise.
It is an idiom, they say
a figure of speech.
But I have begun to wonder
whether in your case it is anatomy.
Do you not feel the tremor of consequence?
Does no pulse quicken at another’s grief?
If you are cut, I fear you will not bleed.
Not red, not warm
but dust, perhaps, or silence.
For what is blood but proof of life?
And what is life without compassion
but motion without meaning?
I search your words for warmth
and find only calculation.
I search your deeds for kindness
and find only advantage.
You measure loss in inconvenience,
not in wounds.
You weigh a person by their use,
not their worth.
Shame…
have you no heart?
Or have you buried it
layer by careful layer
beneath pride, resentment, and cold resolve?
If there is a chamber within you
where mercy once lived,
it is shuttered now.
Boarded.
Airless.
And yet I ask not to condemn you,
but to awaken you.
For even stone, struck long enough,
may spark.
Even iron, heated, may soften.
But if you stand unyielding
if no cry pierces you,
if no tear stirs you
then the accusation stands,
not as metaphor,
but as verdict:
He has no heart.
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