what my heart refuses

and when this mouth betrays me, when every word i have ever loved you with falls broken at my teeth, when my lips, undone, bleed with all i cannot say, look not to them. they are fragile things, faithless as breath. come closer. press your ear to the cage of my chest, and listen, how my heart, that stubborn, sovereign thing, refuses silence, how it labors against bone as if it were made only to endure, beating, beating, beating, your name into me. it does not forget. it does not falter. it does not end. and this is its cruelty, that even as i fade, even as i come undone piece by piece, it will go on, unyielding, unrelenting, undone, beating, beating, beating, for someone who will never hear it.