Smoking a ciggy
atop a Saint
Petersburg roof in summer,
tonight’s best
friends are beside me
—our rucksacks
sharing a room a few streets down.
Cathedrals
stretch towards a sunset
that just
can’t get itself to pierce the day.
But just now,
at this very
moment,
my chest
begins to ache.
This is old
news
—the doctor
back in Adelaide said it’s nothing;
said it’s just
a chronic strain and not a sick heart.
But sometimes
the gut
knows more
than the doc.
I know, too,
that my grandmother’s sick heart
took her
before she had the chance to feel
my own beat.
Yet whether or
not I’m really dying sooner than I’d like
or the body’s
simply reminding me
that either
way I’m dying
one day,
it’s not a
heartbreaking kind of prompt.
More than
anything
it’s just a
reminder to live
whilst alive
as I chance these ciggies
atop a
Petersburg roof
with tonight’s
best friends beside me.
No comments:
Post a Comment