Floating In Her Mouth Poem by Shawn Aveningo Sanders

(first published in Timberline Review,2015)


They told him, It's over.
It's too late.
Even if he could revive her
the brain had been starved
of oxygen for too long.
It's time to let her go.

But he wouldn't let go.

He kept kissing her open mouth,
kept pumping his air,
his love, from the deepest
cavernous corners
of his lungs into hers.

He kept hoping,
kept waiting for the familiar
rise and fall of her bosom,
and the sweet familiar aroma
of stale coffee breath
from her lips.

He couldn't let go.

So later that night
he wrote her a love poem,
then shredded it, poured the confetti
into a Styrofoam cup, and snuck
into the morgue.

He brought the cup to her lips
as if she could sip
his words like a latte, if somehow
by magic she could consume them,
to realize how lost he now felt
without her.

She was buried that way -
never letting go of his love,
his poem forever floating
in her mouth.