Winter Sundays
I would wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking
Pull free from the red balmy quilts, almost suffocating
Slip through the gloomy hallways, bigger when they’re sleeping
Trace my fingers through the grooves in the cold walls until
I’d find the soft gleaming of the heater’s metal switch,
Shining like some imitation North Star
Flick it over, listening for the distant thrumming
I used to pretend there was a dragon rumbling
Somewhere within the walls, blooming smoke
A purring furnace against the
Wild howling of the winter
Banging on the door, stamping on the steps, muttering under the sill
The cold is crippling
I’d nest in the plush covers on the couch
Curl within that circle of heat, almost smoldering
Watching through the wide windows the blurring of the whites
The shell of the fresh-fallen sun and the crackling of the snow
The sky and the ground lost definition and merged
I wanted to see the sunrise
Wanted to see those colors play on the blank screen of the ground
Wanted to see the lights pull free from heavy quilts, too
Wanted to see them shatter like mosaics on the ice
But the colors smudged under my eyelids
And when I woke again, dawn was washing her paints off her hands
Oblivion
I’ll take you to my secret places
My scared places, here, shrouded
Veiled behind layers of thick, sleepy mists
On this fading cliff face
I peer into the distance
The city is swathed in heavy gray, stretching
I feel nothing
But the dew that freezes
In the marrow of my bones
I become one with the cold
I hear nothing
Only the gales that roar
Along the folds of my ears
They smother out any possibilities of sound
I cannot smell the world’s ugliness
The rushing fog that howls around me
Swirls into me, through me
The only scent here is ice
My tongue, exposed, is stripped
I feel white soldiers shrinking behind my gums
This probing fog grapples
My yawn is interrupted by chattering teeth
I see surreal
I came here often, and I dreamed
Too much
I was blindfolded by sight alone
Only silhouettes of phantoms,
Shadows of echoes, remain
These spiraling sprits that infiltrate the sky
And leave their damp footprints in my home
Movement
Caught the corner on a gate
Jerked backwards
Askew
Meant to be a dancer
Meant to be a lily, meant to
Be a fencer’s tip or a fish scale
Lost in a revolving door
Turning and hidden
A mind full of mirrors
Eyes like planets
Spinning, heartbeat spinning
Would have been flight
A smooth movement
Would have been more than
Crooked smiles
Fingers like unfurling ferns
Budding fruit, but interrupted
Meant to be a swan, came out a
Boy