A Sonnet for Marla

Your pale skin stretched across your flesh and bones

with your parted lips slowly bleeding smoke.

Not resting between your screams and your moans,

because to you death is simply a joke.

 

You called with a stomach full of Xanax.

I should have listened to you die right there,

but I didn’t agree with the cynics.

I saved you to let you live in despair.

 

Sex filled with hating and cigarette burns.

I’m keeping you up to keep you alive.

I need you like ashes need kept in urns.

I need you to breath and live and to thrive.

 

I am the worst thing to happen to you.

You are the only love I ever knew.