Stone on a Chest I Love
Forgive me, but I have wanted to be a quiet ruin
not the kind you sweep away,
but the kind that makes you pause at the doorway,
hands heavy, wondering where the light went.
I know the cost of such a prayer.
To be missed like a lost limb
is to ask someone else to walk with a limp.
It is a humiliating thing, this hunger:
wishing a cold, immovable stone onto a chest I love,
just to know I was heavy enough to feel.
And oh, I burn with the shame of it.
The secret, selfish urge to linger
to sit like salt in the back of their throat
when they try to name something sweet.
I want them to reach for me against all reason,
to fight the slow, merciful erosion of time,
and to fear, even for a moment,
that they will never again be who they were
when my hands were still holding theirs.
It is a terrible grace to ask for:
to want your name to sit on a tongue
like an open wound that refuses to close.
Call it a sin, if you must.
I know the grief I am asking them to bear.
I only know that just once, before the noise stops,
before the dust claims my name,
I want to have mattered so completely
that forgetting me feels like pulling thread from skin.
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