The Marrow Debt
I did not ask to be a twin-room for a ghost.
But here you are,
tucked behind the soft tissue of my lungs,
moving when I move,
a second pulse thrumming in the hollows
where the logic used to live.
This is not a ribbon tied to a finger.
It is a graft.
It is the way the skin of a fruit
scars over a puncture—
the metal is gone, but the shape of the blade
is written into the sugar.
I feel you in the radiator’s hiss,
a phantom heat that doesn't warm the room
but scalds the blood.
It is a terrifying symmetry;
when you bruise, I taste copper.
When you turn in your sleep,
miles of dark highway away,
the sheets beneath me go cold
as if the North Star just lost its place.
I am tired of carrying two lives
on one set of tired feet.
I tried to unthread you once,
but the needle came back wet with my own history.
I realized then:
to pull the string is to unravel the sweater.
To lose the tie is to lose the throat.
So I keep the ache.
I wear it like a heavy, velvet coat
in the middle of July.
I let you breathe my air
because I no longer remember
which breath was mine to begin with.
We are two mirrors
shattered in the same earthquake,
each shard still trying
to reflect a sky
that we broke together.
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