If It’s Really Love, Then You Have To Accept This, Too

I tell you my heart is breaking
but the heart has four chambers
and is not shaped like a heart at all
so unless the fist squeezing my chest
is a heart attack, my heart is not
actually breaking but rather
it is being suffocated by anticipation
for what will come next.

You buy me expensive perfume
I use it to sweeten
sour-sick air in the bedroom. I cry.
This room has become your universe.

I cry. These are the days when I fret
for what we have lost, for what
I already know. I cry for what I don’t know,
for how dark the hours will get,
for how much more your illness
will take from us.

I once wrote how patience and tenderness
handclasp around whom we have become
I want to revise the sentiment, I want to say
patience and tenderness wring their hands
until only love and sorrow remain.
Sorrow clutching love, love clutching sorrow.

The yolk of afternoon sun spreads
across the ache of your bones
marks time as it sinks closer and
closer to the ground. I try
to collapse time between doses of medication
constantly watch the microwave clock
urge it along so I may relieve your pain. I cry.

I can no longer tell if it is fear or relief
as yellow becomes orange becomes
almost black – we embrace
the night
with all its small vastness and marvel
on how love
can still find its way in the warmth
of your hand in mine.

Susan J. Atkinson is an award-winning poet and the author of two full length collections, The Marta Poems (2020) and all things small (2024) both published by Silver Bow Publishing. Her most recent publication is a chapbook, Alice In The City, published by Anstruther Press in Spring 2025. To find out more visit susanjatkinson.com