Your Heart

I used to hope that one day you would love me
as hard and as deep and fiercely as I love you
but I shouldn't pray for what's not meant to be
I shouldn't desire for things that simply cannot come true
for you are dying and I am not
I am breathing and you are being denied this right
to live rather than cross your hands and rot
and fall asleep until you give into the light
but maybe that just because you are dying
it never meant or means you never loved me
and that your love has always been nothing
instead of the love you always wanted me to see
people are fleeting, like leaves in the fall
but even when people die, love never does
I thought the more you shrunk, the more your love became too small
as if your love for me never was a was,
but perhaps you never stopped loving me at all?
for in fact the more you died, the longer that your lips
fighted to stay on mine, the more embraces, and work calls
as if you were scared of when you might slip
you keep telling me you're not dead yet
when tears come to my eyes and I fear the width of your love
and if  you thought it and me worth all the work and sweat
when you're gone and mightn't know it above
so you tear of your shirt, in ripping threads
I haven't been able to drag my hands over your chest
because your last surgery scar is ugly is what you said
but how I missed when you undressed
and inched slow and tired into bed with me
but there is something different her when I touch your skin
you ask if I remember when I asked what to your heart is the key
and it was something in your heart deep within
of course I remember, I could never forget this impart
so his shirt is cracked apart, his skin hot like flames
and there are black letters curled across the skin of his heart
he says that this is the key as I tenderly touch the soft letters of my name.





-anna sluder