It was a privilege to be able to carry you when you could not walk ---
I'm laying on the floor of my bathroom
Wine bottle resting over the top of my belly button
Watching the floor fill with water
And I keep thinking how you almost made it
How your skin tightened under my tenderness
Proof that it had been scalded and scorched
That everyone told you to have thick skin
And you showed them you could
But it was still just construction paper
How, instead of hair, flowers sprout from the cracks in your forehead and creases of your scalp
How we all focused on the wrong thing
When you smiled we saw hope
We you cried we saw despair
How you claimed to be a morning person
But really you just never went to bed, you were out all night playing basketball with the moon and longboarding through thunderstorms.
And as the water laps against my cheek and the tile floor is a small creek of flowing tap water
I want to weep for the monster you believed yourself to be. You believed me to be.
Your patchwork tattoos creeping up your arms to prove your rebellion.
If you'd only made it, but like everything else, the lungs can only hold so much water and the eyes can only see so much rot.
You, like the strawberries you pick from your garden, are organic and will decay.
But I would've chosen you even in your disarray and mold.
So I lay on our bathroom floor, drinking this red wine you brought home, filling my chest with maybe and what if, hiding from my own pain like a coward.Â
