my cold hands hold eachother in the search of warmth
because i know, if i let the coldness consume my body
it will also consume my mind

I sit at my desk
The window’s open,
Or it's shut. I don't remember
But I feel cold
My hands wrapped around a pole at a skating rink,
trying to keep myself from slipping
On the cool, smooth surface.

I am walking on the freshly fallen snow,
I am thinking

I stare out the window,
Partially obscured by dark curtains.
They are caught on my plants;
Never fully closed,
Never open wide.
This is what makes me think
The inbetweeness that is what makes

nothing good or bad,
But I used to think there was.
I twisted the sheets of my perception until
The bed was unmakable and I gave up the fight
I sunk into the mattress
And closed my eyes

But this monotony is getting old;
A cut spoiling behind a worn bandaid.
I hated myself for caring
But I now I don’t.
That’s the point. I don’t care about anything anymore
I am trying to hold on to the things that once mattered
But the merry-go round is only going faster
Soon enough I’ll have to get off.

I am looking out the window
Because I can’t focus on anything anymore
I let my eyes glaze over
Because it's easy
Painless.
They don’t focus on anything.
Everything is white, white, white

Must have seen you in a field,
the trampled grass your bed,
your eyes fixed on the sky,
and the sky hanging on blooming fire
and leaves of ashes eloping with autumn–tainted summer.
You didn’t stir,
if not for the fence time drove into the paper soil in between us the song of chaos will probably sing it’s ominous song in my ears.
Not an inch, did you move.

Your thoughts might have been that of your mama, on her porch steps for the hundreds of dinner that waited cold for you that year.
Your papa must have passed a ball to a glove without a hand to hold it up.
Your dear Anna must have been trembling as her heart skipped a beat reading letters written open-endedly.
The hills around you stood mortally wounded, weeping for their trees, still you slept in between those pages while your home collected dust on the shelves that so few of us care to visit.

Still your eyes were fixed on the sky. Unmoved by clouds. Unperturbed by dying sunshine. Shards and shrapnel of ideas burrowing deeper. I knew your lips wanted to part and utter wilting words,perhaps the heaviest word to bear—goodbye.

War has always been indifferent to life.

The sun was still cold in your breath,
half-awake still dreaming and we are way past that hour,
just waiting for the first light to break in and steal the dark away like a stereo.

The air was fetid,
reeking of sad news,
swirling about,
but we moseyed along carrying dustpans and brooms,
lugging garbage bags
like we were sanitation Santa,  sweeping cigarette butts,
and in them I saw burnt time,
and in them I see mounting bills.
The cold air was doing a number
on us, dumping its oblique
sorrow on our then ragged frame
as we emptied waste baskets.

At times when I utter the word doctor,
your eyes go creamy,
your ears wag,
perhaps I was doing an impression—
an echo
of a forgotten life.
People were still groggy on their cardboard beds, their lips wearing soot as they drooped down on the side of their faces, the night weighed heavy on them.
Unlike most sight that slide through and veer away from despair in the flesh, yours fell on them with flecks of your heart knowing that from them we are dimes apart.
We swept, but your broom was nimble, springing into life in those days. Out of nowhere your hope swung a fist. I always remembered those words like a promise and held on to them like a limb.
“Though the world may forget, don’t dare forget who you are.”

I speak not of the sun neither speak to her for the winter it has left in my care. My conversations with the cold snap and the polar vortex had gone stale.

The sun and I had our falling out and if these words should find their way to her doorstep, let her know I don’t miss her warmth. I don’t leap out of the bed to tug the curtain and let her silver light fill my room and let the motes dance in her rays like I used to.

I shudder at her supple shadow swirling, flowing and flitting about, and the halo she wears petrifies me. Her pestilential disposition burns through my walls fortified with years of heartaches. For these, we must part ways.

Ice,
It's cold
But,
It melts easily
Just like you

As I walk,
I feel a pain
In my arm
As worms feed on muscle.

As I drive,
I hear the roars
Of agony
As my soles bleed on rubble.

As I drop
My head on my counter,
I feel blood trickle
As silence fills my lungs.

Faster, and faster still,
I fall,
As these sharp winds
Leave my body wrung.

And I cried oceans
And I stood in your emotions
I think halfway through
I lost the notion;

Of what love is
As I felt the breeze
Of cold air and tulips
I paced through your mist.

And you're so empty
Don't love me gently
Leave me behind
Assume I'm blind.

Perfect doesn't exist,
I clenched my fist.
Prayed for God's call,
I know if I fall,
I gave it my all.