words

firebreather, shake that blood from your heart
and if you hear of my approach
let the others know
the boy is coming home.

we cling to some low hanging vine
and i sobered up from the midday drunk
before coming to watch you go,
nestling in my adequate liver
the same poison that will carry you off,
listening to the pneumatic hiss
of your final breaths,
the last words we will share.

quick shallow intake, terrible output,
eyes locked in a waking REM cycle,
your heart beats a fading rhythm of survival,
that which kept you alive in alien lands
and here now as in there then
the opioids move through you,
they have come to collect.

no direct line travels now from i to you,
it has been severed in your crossing
and when i now listen
there is only some primordial static,
the white noise of infinity.

keep a light out for my approach,
remember my face
and in the after we will speak
as we did not in the before.

-S.C. Martinez