Close to the Heart

It's always the breasts

of the women

I love

or barely

knew

that death takes.

Flaked and yellowed

stories of people

My dad admired

or my own mother,

locked in an airtight

chamber,

a scientific marvel

in this still dying

generation.

Friends and family

and beyond that,

a human linking,

a genetic degeneration

within the chest,

too close to the heart,

which most likely

was always meant

to be the target

in the first place.