Love Poem: The Art of Losing a Limb
Shoaib Malik Avatar
Written by: Shoaib Malik

The Art of Losing a Limb

don't understand your subtle statements
A recollection of days spent in each others basement; wasted 
With candlelight camp-fires that could calm the nerves of a pilot crashing
or a mother dying to give life out of nothing more than fear and passion
There's was a place silent, void of any holes
Where not even frequencies unheard by man could penetrate the distance 
between our souls 
A time when we needed each other for love and comfort like money to keep us 
living 
Was it really time and space forcing our distance? no, but time is unforgiving
To little is the time left where nothing seems to go right 
So i took that one last gasping breath waiting for the impact holding the seat tight
relax; letting the airbags do their magic, i begin to think of the science behind it 
before i go through the windshield 
tragic how the common irrational thoughts can hypnotize if you're not willing to 
feel healed
Images of blood flooded in the eyes of an ocean 
A transparent turquoise with greenish tints reminiscent of sun soaked beaches 
where smiles are the currency of emotion. 
I am vacant like an empty apartment, renovated to make a quick sale but easily 
torn apart
I left you voiceless, handicapped with no blue ribbon for a life well spent breaking 
pieces of me and mending another's heart
White like the light of stars traveling a billion miles to get here are your teeth 
which repeat sweet lies
Like the dissipated whispers of affection you spoke to me on the beach at 
sunrise
You were lucky to get out when you did, you didn't have to play paramedic to the 
broken arms that you once held me in 
Gone, now beyond medicine's advances is my instrument of sin 
The heart not the legs and arms that kept me at your whims 
Speak to me you say, i call it the "art of losing a limb"