Instead of “to Death”

May 3

A Poem by Elle Rosamilia

I love you to life –– how beautiful,

to love something so fully

that it grows through you like a garden.

Death is a too-familiar friend whose face

I’ve grown expectant to see at the street corner,

under my pillow at night,

at the edges of my mirror’s eyes.

My brain still fingers it as an option on the darker days,

saves it on a high shelf should the need ever arise ––

which it never will, I know,

because I have vowed myself that much,

and yet still my brain refuses to dispose of it for good.

I would die for you in a heartbeat,

in the flash of a second after the button’s been pressed,

should the world cave in or the bomb explode

or there be any reason at all where my body shielding yours

would mean you would be okay.

But here, in the waking, breathing hours,

I will do the harder thing for you.

So do the same for me, please.

Let our love be a resurrection.

Help me dig the bones back up,

watch them take on flesh and start dancing.

It’s not yet their time to die.

Loved Back to Light