POETRY Reading: My Body Is a Time Bomb, by Michael Fallon

Poetry by Val Cole
—–
POEM:

you sometimes said.

We knew about your aneurysm for the last
twenty-five years, that bulge in your heart

and chest that could swell with blood,
and like a balloon, burst at any time,

killing you in less than nine minutes, you explained.
They told us it was inoperable.

So there was nothing for it but to be constantly afraid
or forget it and live, which we did,

while it ballooned beneath our radar for years.
Until last fall, when your legs and arms began to swell

–even then we did not realize that this meant
your heart was failing–

but there was to be no quick death.
as your heart began to leak blood

into you lungs and chest,
releasing the pressure but slowly smothering,

choking you,
and so your swollen aneurysm grew,

in the last weeks,
like a foreign body,

–yet also a living part of your heart–
until it carried you breathlessly away

in the middle of the night
and you left me on the shore

of a January morning,
alone in the early mourning light.