it is still beating

Close my eyes held my breath; I am on life support, surviving on invisible tubes
in order to get anywhere far far from me.

Stop.

Stop.

Holding my breath.
Eyes closed
Listen,
Listen,
to my heart beat drumming in accordance to the tintinnabulation of the raindrops hitting an aluminum trashcan outside my childhood home.

Summer is over, and fall, and it is winter and I am still selfish.

But selfish is only one of my truths, and you are one of my truths and I alone am one.

Denying/defining that spring when my spirit wasn’t my own and what that attachment cost me. Cost me my life, my life. I lived on life support, an oxygen tank now there’s a suture where the breathing goes,

Open it up, pull it out and you’ll see it is still beating.

Now when the ghost from a past knocks offering a gift, giving me its time, I look ahead, move on, for every time I held its hand.

Open it up, pull it out and you’ll see it is still beating.

Remember that time I was sprawled out on the floor like an unassembled puzzle?

Open it up, pull it out and you’ll see it is still beating.

I am not crawling, or crying, I am a bore.

Open it up, pull it out and you’ll see it is still beating:

since then,
I have fallen asleep early and watched the evening news, 4 times.

Last night I laughed
And recently, again.

When watching a breakdown from the distance,
its easy to call in kind words,
a kind smile putting it all down so carefully,
wiping it all off gently…
and when its our turn to break
really really break to the point of progressing
it finally makes sense.

Open it up, pull it out and you’ll see it is still beating.

Finally I am able to tune it out. Tune into want feels right for me.

But it’s for the moments, when I denied
that the me that exists today
ever mattered.
Its for those times, those the times I thought I shouldn’t have come here.
At every corner that I bent smiling and every alley I handed my wallet over without a fight.
For every promise I really believed in and every time I cursed the God that my faith asked me to hang on to. For the time I didn’t stop reading for four days because I needed a distraction and the time I got upset at a guilty man, preaching.

Remember that time you fell and I ran back to help you up and I ended up losing?

For the way I washed remnants of an old lover’s footsteps away with my tears and called out with my voice sounding like a death threat.

For the panties barely put in my purse before going home two days later.

And the time I lied.
And the time I left.
And the time I ran
And the time I hid.
For the winter and the way it seems to mourn the death of the past year.
For the winter and the way it looks like the morning of the year to come.
For the horrible angry, badly written poetry- I can’t help but write out.
And the way I rephrase things in hopes of being heard.
For the way I treat her like I am sight-see-her and she is vacation.
For every time I ever thought something would cost me too much.
For every time I thought too hard.
Or stayed too long
For everytime I’ve closed my eyes, held my breath.

Please, open it up, pull it out and you’ll see it is still beating.