I will drive this pen
Through my still-beating heart
And into yours
If it’s still there.

You said to me,
Leaned up against that scarlet brick
With cigarette smoke trailing from your course fingers –
“If you clamber down the river to
Pin yourself under a boulder,
I’ll be there
To lift it from you and onto me.”
You said my eyes bore radiance into your heart
The moment we met, in the dead of night,
Before our eyes could see.

Appreciation does not equal affection;
This I know.

How I wish my words mattered!
I wish they rushed beneath you
Like the river waters which infuse you with life.
And yet I know they cannot.

I wonder if you’re the reason why
Four a.m. jolts me awake
In the cornflower blue between night and day
As I desperately try to shake my consciousness back to life.

I cannot take this to bed,
These crevices, my wellness poor.
The hard wooden planks grinding into my ribs
Offers a reality I better understand.

I had hoped that the deep red hue of my anatomy
Would shock me back to reality;
Would silence the thousand hungry mouths
Murmuring fervently to heavens empty.

These eyes you once declared to be full of radiance
Are held in my skull,
Two cracked marbled strangely swirled with ribbons blue and black.
By declaring them vivacious,
You have deprived them of life.
My eyes are tired, now,
And pale purple vales begin to bloom under my skin
Flourishing and multiplying each day
Like a disease, they thrive, navigate, conquer
Until I cannot see through myself,
See only the plum colored crevices.

I don’t know when I first noticed this burden.
It could have been over the hours and days
I hiked with my backpack weighing heavy down on me.
Still, it is not as heavy as the lack you have left within me.

So I take to the forest floor:
I am enough for the muck of the leaves and rot
Concealing a proliferation of unborn life below.

Despite my weakened body –
Flesh encasing whispers and wind and broken promises –
I am not sorry.
These are the consequences, I know –
But I won’t stop.
I’ll do it all again
In the time it takes your heart to beat.
I’ll be waiting.