Growing Pains
the long and dark december of your heart
still reaches on, its talons crisp as blood lain on the snow.
the rift becomes a chasm faster than the ice melts in the sun,
the frozen pond a deathtrap with a gullet deep as sin.
a footstep becomes a prayer, a leap of faith toward the unknown,
your body plunging ever downwards, the thickness of the darkness
masking the above like muffled words that don't reach song.
could your voice bubble up to me, i wonder,
brittle fingers pressed against the frosted window of ice?
could you knock once, twice, thrice,
the sound of your hope lost beneath the current?
the silence echoes on for miles, the fog swallowing us whole.
to forget your name or the beating of your heart
would be to deny the time we shared, our breaths interlocked.
am i not a killer with your face? am i not the one
you don't recall? i could drown you with my eyes closed.
you were empty, owning nothing, wanting all.
am i not a kindness, blessing your future with the smile of dawn?
the blood is a poem the hands refuse to write down.
they could grip the bone pen, the bone knife
so tightly it could snap. those fingerprints
leave nothing in their wake.
i have lifted my eyes to the heavens;
i have cast my gaze to the ground.
everything falls between those two points,
life teetering on the cusp of death.
the slightest wind racing in the wrong direction could topple it.
isn't that why it's lovely?
the blood is a poem that courses from father to son
like a river splitting; like fallen fruit.
when is the taste of iron not enough to give a man pause?
when he decides that every step was worth the trouble
of forcing his feet to carry him.
the letters in your bones were carved
long before you were born. they are the remnants of your lives --
those lived, unlived, forgotten, remembered.
they are hand-me-downs your parents won't admit
ever fit them.
they were hollow when you inherited them,
chasms left empty and waiting
for something to fill them -- with water, with love,
with a light that would surely guide you forward.
now they have been filled by you; you and your blood,
your sweat, your tears. your life has worn the riverbanks smooth
and your memories have left new trenches in your bones.
your heart weighs as it should, heavy enough
to sink to the bottom of the river and remain there
until the current becomes strong enough to wash it away.
once upon a time, every song i ever heard
was about someone else.
someone i loved, someone i missed,
someone i never wanted to see again.
these people, little lyrics melded with flesh and bone,
danced vividly through the empty theater of my thoughts.
now, now, i am gripped with the fear
of hearing myself in others' words. every line
that used to be about wanting you to come home
rings truer now. every line begs me to keep my eyes open.
the music hurts. it hurts when it's about me.
when it's about the cancer trying to gnaw through the marrow.
i spill out of myself, choke on myself.
the blood is a poem the hands refuse to write down.
shaking hands and broken fingers are no longer enough
to keep down the bile.
hold my wrist by the hospital band and i'll show you
exactly how much i am worth.