Last July I decided to solve it once and for all—I was certain Lucie Brock-Broido had written the line “hearts were made to be eaten,” but I couldn’t seem to find the poem that contained it.
Lucie being dead, I wrote to every poet I know who knew her.
None of them remembered the poem, though they all, too, began to look for it, as it did sound a lot like Lucie.
Tennyson wrote “I will not eat my heart alone,” and Crane “saw a creature, naked, bestial,” eating his bitter heart from his own hands, but Lucie never seemed to have written these words I remembered as hers.
Dorothea suggested that even if Lucie had not written it, she likely had written it, and Elizabeth concluded she would not be surprised if Lucie had sent me this line to search for her.
The above essay is 144 words, a part of a series explained over here.
Thoreau, on a day much like this one: "The landscape is barren of objects—the trees being leafless—and so little light in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart."