Lose My Voice
I could lose my voice to you
in a crushing heartbeat
on a stale hospital bed with plastic veins
trembling inside those parts of me
that you would once sink into to try and find an unresolved part of yourself.
In a flurry of pale words I might sound like a prayer
being led to the end of the world’s last bible
only to find that those final few pages were missing
and that God was just a quiet bit of white space
sitting with everything that’s ever been said
and everything that’s ever been lost.
My fading eyes might resemble those unplugged stars
that would once nourish your world with a light
I would kindle from the beams of an old love
the same light that once upon a youth came between our kisses
the kind that the moon would try to get between
so as to place itself inside a moment of tenderness
for it knows somehow that the battle against its stony night is infinite.
We created a family of memories you and I
the incubating sheets of each year
joining to form a calendar filled with Andrew’s first steps
and Stella’s first dance, those baby words that must feel like
the voice of one dead coming back to touch the heart of his beloved for the last time
our children
are complete islands that persuade that moment when the soul abandons itself in a burning cathedral to rise up and breathe again the cool sun of life.
Close yourself to this deflated loaf
and just feel my words because my mouth has been defeated of its only use
and my body has at last forgotten itself,
the strength it once lifted
the miles it so easily trampled on have now all surrounded me in a reckless grope
fragility is a confine that I pray you never know,
it’s an open cell free of its lock
it’s an imagination being held hostage by a broken wheelchair
its watching everything grow wild whilst you’re forced to shrink further into yourself
but love, love is an indefatigable celebration
the only hand that can never fold because right now
in this hospital room, amongst these hanging wires and this air that tortures my heavy lungs
love is the only medicine I have
so come close
and put your hands inside mine so I can hold again the long fingers of tomorrow
my skin runs ashamed by the breath the keeps all this poison for itself
so take from me all the words you’ll need to write the poem that if death is to style my little future
I know will follow.
I could lose my voice to you
if you could somehow lose your death to me
let me take you from that room where unconvinced flowers bow in their vase
as if they too had peered into my heart and become stricken by its long lament
and in return you could take from me this voice, these words and this gift
that now sound like a promise losing faith in its deepest conviction
but if I had known that your last few words would have sounded like they did
and your body would have convulsed and stiffened as white coats came rushing past me
then maybe I could have thought of something more beautiful to say
maybe I could have read you the poem I was writing whilst you slept under a stuttering beep that allowed life to meet you through a thinning tube and maybe,
just maybe we could have shared that last bit of white space together
but instead
all I could do was drown in the storm you gave my eyes
throwing myself into the arms of a doctor who repeated the word brave
without even looking at me
and gave me a card with a number I should call
if things ever got too much.
Your room is clean now my love
no more machines, no more encouraging smiles, no more waiting flowers
by tomorrow no doubt there will be another loved one fighting her last battle against the precious air
and there will be more husbands, more sons and more daughters who’ll write poems under a stuttering beep because they don’t know any other way of coming to terms with the tragedy of life’s final act
I just hope that they reach the end in peace
because you were the poem I couldn’t save
and this was the voice I couldn’t lose.
Listen to a recording of the poem by Anthony Anaxagorou
