Beautiful when you cry

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Closer," #35 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

It took a lot of courage
to place your bullet in my chest.
But what I want to know is how
did it feel
to remove it first from your own heart,
with no anesthetic, not even a hand to squeeze,
a shoulder to bite down on,
just your own raw bloody fingers pulling
at a thing so deeply lodged it was as if
you could pull apart your own center of gravity
and free fall forever.
("you're beautiful when you cry," he said)
I want to remind you that even if your fingernails
scratched your skin (or mine? Forgive me if I forget which

is which sometimes) in the process of raw surgery,
you were as gentle as possible
but a bullet in the chest is still a bullet in the chest,
you know?
There are so many of them in the world, and sometimes
we get caught in the crossfire
left to bleed out-
One should never bleed out alone, one
should have another heart, of matching intensity

to share the weight of all of our deepest bullets,
and you found mine
and did the bravest thing you could, even
if it was the only thing you knew how to do
or, more likely,
that nothing else was anything you possibly could do-
and you said, "you're beautiful when you cry."
you're beautiful when you cry.

-XOXO,

(for my favorite donkey)