Excerpts From A Voicemail

#Excerpts From A Voicemail

      I

  I take and take

  and never give and

  I'm sorry;

  I don't know how to un-me myself

  except by excision

  because you're the one part of me

  I can't bring myself to cut.

  This one time I stared for over an hour

  at a coffee ring stain

  left carelessly on the

  shelf beside the bathtub

  thinking about how many times

  you must have loved me enough to

  fetch me a cup in the morning

  when I was too

  lazyselfishsad

  paralyzed

  to get it myself

  and by the end I had composed

  an entire ballad

  to this coffee-cup ring and your love

  but then I forgot it all because

  Doctor Who was on and

  I fell asleep in your arms instead

  parasite that I am

  I could not stop myself.

  

      II

  at the ferry docks because you work

  graveyard just to pay for my surgeries

  and you never complain you just peer

  through tired eyes at the rising sun and

  kiss me good morning and oh how

  I love you for that — you are the best part

  of this disease and I would not be

  me without these pieces of you in my

  heart and if at birth you don't succeed

  why not overcome over achieve over

  come over come inside because I

  need to see your eyes again without

  the glaze of exhaustion suffocating

  like a face full of Saran Wrap and

  it doesn't hurt at all no it feels like

  love

  

      III

  it's dark why is it so

  

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More Poetry from Lana:

On Mortality, December 1980

Chambers Street

On Regret

The Man of Châlons

Beast

Silence Is.

The Day I Caught The Sun

Nearly Zero