In which Amber celebrates approximately five years of poetry.

That night (and everything after it)
was a knife stabbed right through my heart,
and before you condemn me for using clichés,
know this:
one-third of stab wounds to the heart
are survivable.

Imagine: spindly muscle fibers stretching,
weaving a thin blanket of sorrow,
and skin reappearing over blank red lines.

Your scar wasn’t a pretty one.
It was itchy, white and raised,
right over my ribs, and every time
I wore a low-cut shirt I felt sure
that everyone could see the bloody scratches
on my pericardium.

I’m one of the lucky ones. The thirty percent.
Heartless, you said, but you were lying,
because when I lie on the floor, watching the shadows
of passing cars, I can hear
the far-off whisper of sweet ghosts in my arteries,
easing along at a steady 90 over 60.

Sometimes the dead don’t stay down.