i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

He gently stroked it, then pulled away. “I can't do this,” he said. But he knows he owes me, and he knows to swallow, look down, and breathe in on three even beats. 

What betrays the fact that you’re still alive is your fluttering eyelids, gently twitching like a heart about to give out. The last time you were fully awake was four days ago—you usually give us a few hours every couple of days, so we’re really stretching the dregs of your sleep hours for this. Couldn’t help it, they’ve upped the security at the university hospital. They had you on glucose for a week before they realized you needed to be under observation long-term. Your feeding tube was slick with yellow-translucent bile when I had him inch it through your nose, and that held us back some minutes, too.

I check the curtains and the lock on the door for safety and for the seventh time tonight. The metal in my pockets is clean and ready for the job. I even smell like it, and I smell like the fresh isopropyl we soaked your skin in to hide the sour hospital vomit and old sweat. These precautions are my act of service and love for you. 

He’s shaking now. Not noticeably immediately, but he takes a break every small distance he cuts down the front of your gown to still his pale hands. We chose a quiet spot, the room is silent save for his sharp breaths and knees shifting against the tarp. I have to finish the cutting for him, and I have him clean the equipment at the nearby table so I could have some time with just you. I spread alcohol and light-handed affection over the bare skin of your chest, and it feels just like butterfly wings, powder-soft and thin and veiny. You are cold to the touch, faint like cloud nebula under the single light. You are beautiful like a comet’s tail or a deer’s shedded antlers caught in a tree’s low branches, like the edge of dying and like life reabsorbed by the universe. 

I dig through my bag for the wooden comb I snuck from your bathroom at home. (When I bring it to my nose, it still smells like Pond’s and ashy peony.) I run it slowly through your white-streaked hair, sparse now because of your meds. I take my time to work through the mats. And though they break around the teeth of your comb quickly, I feel my stomach clench as fingers into a fist. I hated how they treated you at that hospital. I hated the med students who stood in the back when the doctors visited your bed, the nurses’ rushed hands against your IV wound when the other rooms were busy. But I hated the most how they seemed to forget you over time, checking on you less and less as the two-day stretches spacing our your few waking hours became three days, became four. I’m the only one who comes to visit now, I come every morning and every afternoon. I hate how the receptionist looks away as quickly as she spots me, how every doctor only approaches me to make sure the unspoken suggestion of pulling the plug rings in my ears.

In a way, I’m doing them a favor. 

Without thinking, I start talking to you. I try to recite it, as much as I still know of it. “And it’s you, are whatever a moon has always meant.” After all these years, my memory is spotty at best and my voice skips, but I hope you can take the effort to mean something.

“Here is the deepest secret nobody knows. Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud, and the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.” I set down the comb on the tarp beside me and dip my thumb into your dimple, it’s still on your left cheek from the time you danced me around the dining room, my toddler feet on top of yours and my chubby wrists in your pretty pianist hands, and you lost balance and hit your face against the corner of the table. “This is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.” 

So I do remember it. I remember your favorite poems, your favorite classical and your favorite piano jazz. I’ll play for you, another time.

He’s finally gotten ahold of himself and kneels down on your other side. I hand him the scalpel from my pocket, and the first incision he makes is lengthwise down your left abdomen. Your blood is almost bright pink in this light. 

You take in a raspy breath and seem to stir a bit, so I keep going for a few lines. “Anywhere I go, you go. Whatever is done by only me is your doing.” I stroke the inside of your dimple one more time before slipping on rubber gloves to give him a hand.

Anywhere I go, you will now go. Whatever is done by only me, will soon be your doing. I love you, I love you more than words can say, and more than anything I could do to prove it. The wrinkles at the corners of your eyes and lips deepen, so I smile back. I swallow my nerves and whatever instinctive repulsion I fear I just started feeling. I hope this is a start. 

I’m not sure what it is we cut out first, but I bring it to my lips immediately. I never much liked the taste of blood, but taste is a luxury I don’t need. 

I’ll take you in, until you are with me forever. (Whatever a sun will always sing, is you.)