I still think of you
and when I do my heart aches and so does
my arm in the place where you broke it last year.
you wrote lies on my wrist before they bound it in a cast
where your sharpied I love yous were sworn to secrecy against my swollen skin.
you called it poetry just like you called me baby just like you called us forever.
the words were gone in six to eight weeks just like you were,
rubbed the wrong way.

the day after you left me
I returned to the emergency room,
inhibiting pains in my chest, throat closed up,
left side of my body numb,
insisting I had gone into cardiac arrest.
you told me you wouldn't leave me til your heart stopped,
I called it poetry, you called me baby, you promised me forever
but which one of us had the EKG showing a
heart about to burst.

why did I let your words seep into my skin, into my bloodstream, straight to my heart.
there's poison in your poetry
there's an end to your 'forever.'