The Notebook on the Bedside

My notebooks are filled with stale Love poems

to people still rotting in my chest.

And I heave to clean them out,

moldy fingerprints still stuck

to the ventricles and bones

as they are on my hips and waist.

I cannot scream or scrub them away.

Their putrefaction runs from my mouth

and drips onto this page--

the one I had always intended for you.

Slime soaks through from this page to the next,

and I realize too late

I have ruined your whole notebook.

There is no more room for all my pretty words.