You taught me to wrap my apologies around a bouquet
of flowers and let it wilt with daffodils and daisies.

You taught me that sometimes lungs don’t work
the way we want them to and sometimes people fall
in love the way the rain kisses the ground; 
colliding head first into something that is destined to fail. 

The last time we went to the supermarket,
you fainted in the dairy aisle, a gallon of milk
exploding across the floor like a bomb. 
When you woke, dazed and cornered,
you held onto me like you were a burning shipwreck
and I was the shore.

I had to explain that the blood seeping
out of your nose was as normal as cancer gets
and the teenage cashiers, in their aprons and name tags
texted their friends about bitter love tragedies.

You looked at me and in your doe eyes,
I saw the word ‘leave’. I leaned up, kissed
you in front of everyone and breathed out ‘no’.

We are having the sky’s love affair;
you are the sun and I am the moon
and I fear that you shine much too brightly
for my carved skin, I fear that one day
I will look up and you will be burned out.

The doctors told us terminal
and we went home and instead of crying,
we kissed and kissed and kissed
and that day, I swore that with every breathe you lost,
I would always give you another.