The winter folds, sagging like old skin. It dissolves
beneath the rain
tooth-gray sky pulled past tearing,
hole-pocked,
spilling ashy light into the veins
of back alleys. Drenched monochrome,
my boots patterned black-white in static
gathered from salt-flat roads,
pressured by dotted lines and
cold-swelled streetlights.
If there was kindness, it is hidden or dead
buried under the sunless months. I’ve set
my hands into feather-soft snow
found it giving, past rotten. Like an old pumpkin
softly writhing, then sun-bleached
and skeletal above the porch steps.
