I Am Never Not

It doesn’t matter
if I’m standing up or lying down
or driving a car
or taking a bath —

a persistent weight, a solid boot
curls its toes around my neck and soul
making my breaths shallow, uncertain, afraid.
(I will never breathe easily again).

I desperately grip the hearts
that are beating nearby,
terrified they’ll be sent into orbit one day without any warning
like you were.

Statistics and science are such dangerous subjects
what is either worth
when it’s the anomalies that matter most?

One breath–
I would have given anything
for you to have taken just one breath
outside my body
so you could have known my love in this world.

I need you and want you
like I’ve never needed or wanted anybody in my life.
It feels like I’ve been disemboweled with rusty hedge clippers
like somebody is pounding her fists on the back of my eyeballs
demanding to be let out of a cage,
released back into a time
when life and death were not so synchronized.

Pulling my knees into my chest
I rock softly on the floor and remember
the English language is not so fine.
It does not have the words I require
to unmask such horror
or shed the lining of such painful truths:

I am never not missing you
I am never not imagining you
as you were and as you would be and as you are.
I am never not incomplete
without you.