(no subject)

[apiphile]

first person, last resort

i asked delilah what i should do
and she told me to put my pain in a poem
and i asked *** what i should do
and she told me too: put it in a poem
and they're liars, both of them
i know
year after year the three of us
have put the pain into this body
as if it had no limit to it
as if it could withstand everything passing through it;
sometimes the granite--
the quartz crystals clogging the chambers in this heart
weigh so heavy in my chest that they crush the air
from lungs and i can't do anything, can't hold anything but my breath
until the claw-coated thing is shoved back inside my throat again
and can't lump its way out
can't force its fists into my eyes.
i've told the story a thousand times: how i broke my back
tried on every occasion to make it funny
and like the attempts that followed and preceeded that weak thin crack
never succeeded.
it felt like nothing for twenty years;
no one else cared, i thought, so why should i?
i chose an inconvenient moment
to stop wanting to die.