By No Means a Love Poem

This is by no means a love poem,
But the heart really is a fascinating thing.
A lot of people don't think much about it until it's necessary to,
Or unless they're referring to it as some bleeding, beating, ever-angsty, super personified unit of love.
It's really complicated and amazing, though.
I mean, your heart strings can genuinely break,
It's called broken heart syndrome and it's symptoms are almost identical to that of a heart attack,
Which is funny, because the first and only time my heart ever physically hurt was when you took your first medically recognized heart attack.
The worst part about being a nursing student is that people are so honest and unforgiving about these things.
I'm fine with handling C-Diff shit,
I'm happy to work with people who don't know what city or year we're in,
I'm even getting better with accepting strangers' pain levels and deaths.
What's really hard though is looking your teacher in the eyes as you talk about what a miraculous recovery your father has had and listening to her tell you "He's dying,
I hope you know this"
"He's running out of time,
And he's sprinting"
I remember listening to stories about when you ran distance and I paid attention to every detail
All the while ignoring the ache in my barely-there shoulders as you hung to me, afraid to fall,
And I, afraid to let your words fall and afraid that if you fell I would have to leave you there, stood in silently as your crutch.
For years I stood in as a substitute for calcium and muscle mass and listened to your bones crack like commas,
Always assuming the pause in sentence wasn't because your body was falling apart and you needed to concentrate every breath on not dropping,
But because you needed me to hang on to your words, just like you needed me to hang on to.
One of my favorite things about you is that when I was growing up you were hardly ever wearing a shirt.
You were never ashamed of your forever farmer's tan.
You were never ashamed of a lifetime of hard, manual labor.
You took pride in what was left of your aging body,
Showed off every inch of your overworked, underpaid, overexposed chest.
These days you're hesitant, as if you're embarrassed of your heart failure,
Humiliated by 95% blocked arteries.
You act as if people can see the thick scar tissue glowing, even under your shirt,
You wear it like a scarlet letter.
Your own body let you down.
I remember when I was younger you would come home from work and I would run to you and wrap myself around your legs,
I'd stay there for as long as I could and you'd walk me around the house as if I was really attached to you.
I think your heart broke a little when I stopped doing that.
Ironically, that's all I want now.
I want to go back and tell myself that this isn't forever,
Hold on for a few more years.
I know you think it's morbid to talk about death,
You especially don't want to talk about your own.
You don't want me to tell you things I'd regret not telling you,
But I don't know if your heart can hold on for a few more years.
You want me to talk to you like you'll be a phone call away until forever
But every day I wait for the call.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/4i1tyu/medication/

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/4hyi8o/hearty_leather_boots/