And So I Learned Sunsets Can't Fix Everything Poem by Maya Hanson

Cool metal on my fingers
but through my eyes this door handle is the swords of an army
and as I enter my blood goes from icy winter to a perfect clean cold,
my boots thunder or tiptoe on the pristine tile.

This is a hospital.
I have to keep reminding myself
this is a hospital,
and I don't want to believe this is where you live
but it is where you exist.

I want so badly to go in
to keep walking
God knows you've faced this better than I ever will
but I am choking on your absence
and I don't know if we will ever stop carrying this weight
if we will ever be the same once you're home.

And no, nothing broke your bones
but that would make it easier to sleep at night
knowing without question you are healing.

And no, no one took a blade to your throat but
you might as well have
I can't speak,
I want to write you a letter
but I don't write in prose
and if I try I know all it will say is
this is just a broken link in your chain
zoom out and you're the silver necklace someone has always wanted to wear
you are blind but we all have to watch as
you try to burn yourself down.

You have always been the perfect elixir when every piece of me is exhausted
but here
you are washing me out
like the walls
like the floor
what do they think, you'll drag colors down your arm like a blade?

And just because the sunset is perfectly orange on the way home
does not mean my head is less tangled or
my heart has stopped boiling into steam-
I could tuck myself into a corner and not know the difference
because when you're here you fill up the air all the way to the ceiling,
all I know is that you are only a seventh of the beating hearts in this house
but now that you're gone I can hear the shadow of its sharp stab to your chest
like the silence could kill me.

People break so easily.