My darling Sara

the failing use of my right hand isn't actually the failing use of my right hand. it's just another way to tell the time. and i'm ticking. so i've been picking myself up at bars, a bottle in each hand, but i never give myself any play.i just make plans with myself for the day after next. by the time the sun swings itself back into position i forget the context of why i asked myself out in the first place.did i think i was gonna score? i let a stranger pour me one more. she said " my name is sara " it doesn't take much more than that to start a relationship. my darling sara, cleans rooms for a living. giving her youth and beauty to dirt and dust, understands more than most that family must be a foot that you put forward first you must weather the worst together. but having never met her family, she places love above all else and protests that i use the word love too freely in poems and that i should really just say what i mean. i suppose what i mean most is that i'm trying. she's been buying me time on a maxed out credit card, arms scarred from selling her own blood to pay down the debt. tells me she doesn't mind going broke as long as i can give her a little sweat. she says try. so i do my best impression of a pen, and when every problem looks like a page i can make into paper and the worth of the words that comes out determines my wage, and i'm making enough to pay her the compliment of not quitting,of not sitting when standing is required. she only asks that i put the effort in,and in return shes willing to pin a paper heart to her chest and do her best impression of a target. she says that effort is the siamese twin of success. so when everyone else looks like a wrong answer she'll settle for being my best guess. so we lie in bed like a mess that someone has been meaning to clean for the large part of a long while. we lie there like a pile of dirty laundry, and how we'll ever come clean is beyond me, so we dont. she says it's supposed to be dirty. and if by the end you haven't hurt me, then you didn't try. so i do my best impression of a surgeon going in cutting purple hearts out of my own use my veins like thread and have them sewn to my skin like medals, because when the bleeding stops and the dust settles, all we have are our wounds to wear like decorations on our chest. sara does her best impression of a war. tells me not to count my pride among the casualties because maybe faith means never keeping score. she says there's more to effort than just switching gears and in terms of what one should give in the slight sweat hold more value than tears. you have to try. and even though the failing use of my right hand means i'll never land a knockout punch in the first round, life is composed of sound and fury, and whatever noise is left within me will be twice as loud when i try, so i plug myself into the idea of going the distance and i amplify. my darling sara. has a throat like a vase that sings her words into bloom. she's got a voice like perfume that's been sticking to my clothes so everyone knows that i've been sleeping. she's been keeping me so close you could use my body for evidence. pull her fingerprints as proof that she's been on top so often that she's starting to look like my roof. a real sexy roof. and she doesnt leak. unless you count the crying. she does that sometimes. worries that she's just a backup plan. my darling sara. ive lived long enough to learn that to many choices can destroy a man. i will make no exodus,year round long enough to watch uncertainty bid us farewell, the echo our names into the crater caused by the impact of when our lack of conviction fell. you never had to sell me on the idea that absolute certainty on the trustworthiness of another, the first and only time you met my mother momma said, i like the way she looks at you. and i echoed back to her that i liked it too. eyes like recycle bin blue. sara looks at broken things as if she can make them new, and more than a few times i caught her staring. caught her wearing a smile reserved for those busy making plans.sarah believes that distance is a fundamental that can be sidestepped by a piece of string and two tin cans. and i remember when my tin can rang. it said there's no family to speak of so love is next in line, and theres not alot of time and she's asking for her boyfriend. in the cab to the hospital i feel my heart bend as if bracing for impact. so i do my best impression of a man and face fact. its supposed to hurt. a doctor does his best impression of the truth and spares me attempts to skirt around the issue. they can't stop the bleeding. and the failing use of sara's heart isn't actually the failing use of sara's heart, it's just another way to tell the time. my darling sara. i was holding your hand when you died. and even though the failing use of my right hand prevented me from feeling you leave. i tried.