The tendrils of your heart
wrap around me like barbed
wire,

puncturing the pale skin
that shields my bones like
a sheet,

some half hearted ghost
that knows the secrets of
near death.

I have been there before,
tangled in tubes, belly full
of Aspirin, blood thinning

in a hospital bed. Shackled
by secrets, a blunt knife
beneath a filthy pillow.

I have looked into the eyes of God
and found them to be merely
mirrors of

my sin