Poem to a Broken Rib

A bruise no more,
Where
Once I felt your love press
Hard,
Felt its rise,
Felt its flutter,
Felt it die.

Memory now that beating,
Across the border
Where only I could be felt
Pressed,
My heart,
Morse through skin and sweat and bone
Each thump a testament to what we hoped undying.

That once, when kisses and tingles where enough,
No need then for turbo beats,
Nor sessions of Gold,
Before thin times of lonely skin and bone,
Before Fit-as-fuck,
Before you became
So
Unfeeling.

There,
Then, close, inside,
Where you twice felt it break
- at the start
- and in the end.
Was that pain I most remember,
Sharp,
That I sometimes still feel,
When I recall.

Laid hard on that cage,
I felt its prick,
That single bar bent back,
Misshapen in your perfection,
By violent fall,
A bone so hated,
That once poked my heart,
Perhaps now pokes another
A pain remembered still,
A bruise left on parting.