Nine times, I’ve found myself sprawled out,
etherized on the ECG table, in a room
peopled by cardiac monitors and
bespectacled cardiologists.
Nine times I’ve known the speed at which my heart beats
to exactly equate the velocity of light,
which is the same, I suppose, as the gravitational pressure
exerted on a given body in motion,
taken by the exquisite art of free-falling,
self-destructively.
One night, my father hid himself
somewhere between bodies,
stationed at the entrance of my room
while I agonized.
I swear, if I believed in forgiveness,
here is what I’d have said to him:
I forgive you for passing unto me
your heart of stone.
A heart not capable of loving in the way
the world has come to know it,
and choosing instead, time after time,
all the several darknesses that I hated once,
but have now come to love
like the cologne of a passer-by,
long lost to the winds.