Bed Scenes
Did I want a happy ending?
Looking for an answer meant
the careful measurement of every
breath-- yours whilst tangled
up in tubes, and mine, shamed in
suffocation, strangled in guilt.
Words are metered, oh how they
run! And answers require precious time,
so I exhaled a hazy
Yes. (Softly and thusly, the poem begins).
See, I spread myself
too thin, into a buttery vastness, from
the various comings and goings: into earth
to six feet under it, from one hospital to
the next, from this life to the after-
life, from you, back to me, and back
then with hope, back to us.
I was tired.
No, you'd tell me now: I was weak.
Not in the same way as you
were, but "in a much sadder sense".
Hearts, wintry and iced, have been thawed here
in this room. These walls have heard moans of pleasure and pain and ****-
what in between. A fan looks down upon me,
blowing blame, gently, "kindly turn it off", I whispered
to him (I never got his name).
And so.
Fragile
tensions grow
other intentions
touch turns in-
to tender flesh
now tended.
Naked
shoulders
down
down
down
Surrender.
oh
oh ****
oh
oh
oh God
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
That endless echo felt
sticky with a lack of devotion. So there you lie on
what was to be your death-
bed, and I lie
on mine. Prisoners of sheets:
soft and fluffy and smell of Downy
but no less cold than steel. I knew then
we could never be free. See,
endings are never happy.
And I prayed, for your sake,
that hot towels abound in heaven.
Copyright © Ulysses Fonte | Year Posted 2013
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