you will really know love when you are nothing

you saw me
when a skeleton, I was,
with not even a feather
to warm me.

                 Before this,

there had been decades
of warm meals,
steady enough to believe in
And large eyes, so beautiful,
they turned me to
 a Fool,
somehow surprised
by the spit on my face
and the direction of laughter.

                  Later,
in the alley, there,
tender & starved,
you found me,
unable to breathe
or cry,
or believe anymore

and with hands Larger than my soul,
you gripped the cancer from within my bones,
ripped it out of me with kisses,
while patches of flesh
grew beneath your breath,
Your life
blood
climbing into my callow veins,
until
You were Nothing Left
and Everything to me

at the same time