Contagious Cancer Poem by Daniel Cook

take a biopsy of my heart
you'll find it dead.
I've become a cadaver
forced rigid by your sweet rejection
which grew on my heart like a cancerous abscess
with each passing vision of you
i wish i was just comatose
or a shameful malingerer
but i suffer no such shame
the etiology of my disease is you
from the first time i saw you
a carnal, simian, desire for you
sprang deep within me
and whenever you were near
physically or cognitively
i was struck with hysterical aphasia
but my mirror became my therapeutic savior
hours before it pretending its you,
until i had more confidence than a man going in for a vasectomy
then finally that fateful day, more nervous than a woman on the day of her mastectomy
i spoke your name, confessed my admiration only to find a wall of no appreciation
you must have had arteriosclerosis
what else could stop the flow of blood to your heart, inhibiting your love
and since that day, your words replay, in my head
becoming a carcinogen, eating away at my heart
ive gone far past the help of this world,
no prothesis can save me now
your cancer as spread beyond my heart
through each vain, out each limb and all the way to my brain
if only it were benign and i was alive and could love again.
but your contagious cancer of 'no love' has killed me.