Please understand,

I am slow, these days;

once etherized & exteriorized

a hundred thousand ways.

You tell me, do what the doctor says.

But that’s a life I can’t imagine living.

Strangled tissue rarely dies

a quiet, peaceful death;

is it so wrong to let it lie?

To consider it unwise

to revive a thing

that only played at being alive?

The heart knits itself

up a little wrong,

puts stitches where

they don’t belong.

Dead tissue

slapped with patches

made of whatever collagen it can find,

a chamber now resigned

to its existence,

propped up by a persistence

that the body thinks is kind.

But never mind.

This is not the type of scab

you can peel

to reveal the hot red blood

moving underneath your skin.

Not the kind that you will feel

shrinking if you can invest in

the right expensive products.

It’s the type that makes a muscle hard,

until the whole damn organ’s scarred.

Until its work can’t be undone.

Until it’s a heart that can’t be won.

You could open my ribs again,

relive the disappointment when

the only thing you see

is a slowly pumping heart

that’s much too stiff to rush

when your fingers brush my hand,

please understand.