If the dead call,
tell them I wanted to be brave for them.
Tell them I almost was brave
but I didn’t know how to stop
my spine from creaking
like the doors of
an abandoned house.
I’m the “too late”
they talk about in movies.
The ambulance that broke down
on the side of the road.
The flat-lining heart inside.
The sirens they all closed
their windows to.

What I’m trying to say is
no one came back for me.
At the end of the night,
when it was my body on the floor,
nobody ran their fingers through my
hair and carried the ghosts away from
my chest.

When it was my hands,
clumsy and wild,
searching for the next ring on the ladder,
nobody told me how far to reach.

When it was my heart,
starving and rotten
like a country ruined by war,
nobody offered their leftover
rations or
their trees blooming with fruit.

They loved to watch my famine.
The reminder that there were still those 
hungry for something more.