Touch

They heard a murmur in your chest, a whisper: tiny fish lips bulging the surface. A bubble, a b u r s t, a blurp of sound innocent as baby-lung collapses (expansions) -- a gurgle in the night: taciturn. You had to swallow a tube and I know you hated that. You hated the taste of dependency: machinery air -- filtered, rancid, thick like plant water. You said your throat rasped, your lungs opened with a sound like a suction cup, and the machinery h i s s e d, licking its lips for alcohol and cancer. They took pictures with sound waves, rebounding them off your reverberating heart and filling in the dark spaces with oscillating light. And the whole time your chest continued its phthisic monologue, whispering in stil.ted rib-cage morse code -universal SOS, lighthouse wail- leaving braille on the underside of your sternum that not even I could touch. They said your heart had thickened beyond weakening, churning your blood like milk into butter, and I went into the bathroom and screamed myself h o a r s e water running, hands over ears. Later you would ask me why I splintered the mirror, why I placed my palm and pushed until spider webs spun themselves under my fingers and bits snapped and sunk like thinthin ice beneath tiny children. Why I stood in the road on a snowy evening, arms outstretched, waiting for the white of winter to consume me. Why I cried as the shower beat down on me, fingers searching for life beneath layers of skin: tiny oval seeds g r o w i n g, little black masses with tendrils sprouting, roots delving. A lump in one breast, transfigured ellipsoid: multiplying, metastasizing. --milky white matter with blue veins extending. Why? Because you found a way to die: beautifully, tragically, easily, undoubtedly and we both know it was me who wanted to breathe through tubes, no more heart murmuring.