This is unforgivable,
To leave you
Trapped inside the airtight
Box of my smile
Or kindness.
I never asked enough
To know which
It was.
When we parted ways
In the airtight room,
I thought the door was unlocked.
That you needed some
Time to think.
A floor,
Four walls,
The lamp,
And the two parakeets
I reluctantly forked over
For your trouble.
As with a poisoned mine,
The birds were the first to go.
I would have never
Closed the door behind me
If I knew you would
Be trapped.
I do not think.
You can't help
But to imagine
The shape of my stomach
Upon opening that door,
New prospective occupant
Nearly underfoot.
I heard him run
From the sight of it.
The smell.
But never turned my head
To watch the retreat.
Here,
The lamplight still burns.
The floor is caked with tears.
Gritty, gritty tears.
Yours always had a way
Of sticking around.
The walls have started to crumble;
They too have been kept
From breath.
There are footprints on the ceiling.
These sign reluctance.
You fought yourself for survival
In the last moments.
You convinced yourself
That indigence laced with delusion
Would uproot an answer.
You inverted the solution.
The corners were what got me.
Three of them
To be exact.
The other five sheltered cliches:
Your hopes,
A crucified hand,
Another crucified hand,
A yard of moleskin,
And your signature in firefly blood.
The other three really
Caught me by surprise:
Your Past gazed at me from the bottom left.
A child's beg.
It took no shape
But that of two precipice-eyes.
They well
And remind me my shame
In carelessness.
Your Future glared at me from the upper left,
As if to remind me,
"You never carved a spare key."
I take it like a man,
Knowing I had bones to carve:
Bones I chose to keep.
And the bottom right corner
Of this room,
This room which gasps for breath,
Somberly snatched the wind
From my body...
Your Beating Heart
Languid, but stoic,
Had jumped from your chest
And run to you.
Like a half-life miracle disaster,
It had summoned breath
To coat your throat
And beckoned you to safety,
Or something akin.
I had never seen anything like it.
The body broken,
The heart a saviour.
This,
This is truly survival.
With an opened door,
Discovery of this magnitude
Can even become life once more.
I carved this doorstop
From a bone in my wrist.
I wasn't using it.
It is no key,
But it is yours.
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