Sofa

I long to be close to
where your beating heart
was among its last beats.

I sit on the couch where
we spent your last night —
but cannot bring myself
to be on the cushion where
life was fading from you
and you lay against me.

I didn’t sleep, for vigilance
you didn’t sleep, for pain —
so tired, so dazed, so lucid
so knowing, so loved —
so gone.


INFj autopsy

the autopsy will find —
coloured flowers in my grey matter
still-beating poetry in my heart
unspent ink in every organ
blood saturated with love
bones mineral’d by life’s rough days
muscles fiber’d by courage and fear intertwined
and a slightly crushed but glittering soul

Terri Guillemets