Felled

In your presence

I become asthmatic

Struggling to breathe and

Say what I mean

In your essence

I can taste the sadness

In struggling to relieve

The burden of dreams

And in a second

A thousand steps to concession

She wishes her heart away

Quietly struggles to believe

In your presence

The structure collapses

The words have trapped me

In photographs and memories

Paint me in the color of love

Common only with the shade of death

Then rinse my soul of your touch

And lay the condemned to rest

Beneath the ashes and the trash

Beyond the first and behind the last

Wake me for one more breath

A drag of the cancer that consumed my chest.