Graveyard
I have been crumbling since the day my sister died.
She had made her home in my heart.
When I got excited or nervous,
She would thud around,
Jumping from artery to artery.
She used to dance through my veins
And write poetry in my blood.
She would hum a harmony
To every song I sang.
My sister used to giggle uncontrollably.
It would bubble up inside her and explode out so far and wide
I would feel the reverberations in my ribcage.
People who say laughter is not contagious have never met my sister.
And I remember the day she died perfectly.
She was snug inside my aortic valve,
Etching a memory into a capillary,
I could feel each grove she made.
But I decided to give my heart away for a moment,
Just for a minute.
I swear. I didn’t think he
Would drop it. I wasn’t planning on him
Shattering it. I did not think
That all of the walls in my heart, in her house
Could spider-web crack.
I didn’t realize how paper-thin they were.
These walls have taken bullets before,
Survived knife fights,
Held back too many bombs,
I didn’t think I had made them so weak.
It was just for a minute.
I swear.
The moment she died she crumbled into ash,
Blending in with the dusty remnants of her house.
There was a pile sitting inside my ribcage,
Completely sedentary,
And for whatever reason,
My lungs wouldn’t blow it away. So it stayed.
But my sister, she was a bit of a nerd,
And while english and human anatomy,
For whatever reason,
Were her strong suits,
She knew a thing or two about the rock cycle, and
She would be proud of me for telling you
That when you put enough pressure on sediment,
It turns into stone.
So right now, there’s just this bolder in my chest,
A tombstone, if you will. My lungs have decided to try to do something about this
Dead weight I’ve been carrying around, but
It’s too heavy to be blown away.
It’s getting too heavy for me to breathe because
It’s pushing into my fragile lungs, cracking my ribs,
Her tombstone just sits.
I am not sure what people who experience heartbreak mean
When they say they feel empty inside,
But I do know what they mean
When they say a part of them is missing,
And I believe there is a difference.
I have crumbled into a graveyard.
Tombstones are stacked straight as a spine
A mausoleum has replaced my sternum,
My teeth are ghosts.
They tell the stories behind the graves.
Not the important dates,
Not the cause of death,
But the actual information. My teeth talk about hobbies,
Favorite foods, Adventures,
Heartbreak, Regrets,
Sisters.
And my sister.