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.