CPR

I didn't mean to strike her

My fists were sledge hammers

Her chest became cracked concrete

Over-passes passing over her heart

I didn't know she was so fragile

There were scars beneath scarves

She had become scabbed skin

Structure concealing raw wounds still gaping

Her hands held bleeding hearts

My love was just a Band-aid

I first saw her alley in her eyes

Mine meeting deadlock determination

Disgust disguising desire dressed in dingy dignity

Bare body beneath borders

Made by torn blouses held closed

She asked that I look away like the others

Somehow less whore and more hero

I could see through her cloudy facade

As transparent as facial film

From men who had freshly fucked her

All she needed was home

A place in someone’s heart

I watched men enter her over and over

Repeatedly leaving pieces of themselves behind

Building abandoned warehouses of regret

Hope became hot hangers and cervical scaring

Souls were deconstructed buildings and empty lots

Love like gravity that pulled her from me

Her escape was the short flight

Between bridge and black water

A crash landing wreckage

Of release and heartbreak

I became panic and doubt

Reaching out with slippery fingers

Tear soaked searching shorelines for lost souls

She lay limp where they landed

I tried to breathe life back into her

Prayers became snow flurries

That melted away when they landed on us

She had been french once

Vouloir c'est pluvoir

Where there is a will there is a way

I kept pumping trying to push my prayers into her

De troit, mon cherie avec l'amour

Je tu donne ma tout

These narrows, my sweet with love

I give you my everything

Just breathe...

Respier

Breathe

Breathe..

Breathe....

Please