Saturday, October 4, 2008

self-preservation

I need winter to come and push me back into my skin.

I’ve been slipping out slowly,
melting into stained asphalt
into ambivalence.

it is easy to disappear in the summer,
to lie and find the heartbeat beneath your palms
in fistfuls of grass
in dried embers
in the last time you felt truly awake,
the last time anything was cold enough to knock the air from your lungs.

but in the winter being comes naturally.
we wrap ourselves, cradle bony arms against shivering stomachs,
layer ourselves so many times over that there is no question
of where One ends
and where Another begins.

our breath hovers,
as if attempting to prove that it came from not nowhere but Somewhere

we etch our separations into heated entryways,
silences,
keyholes,
tea

and every time we are struck by an alienburningfreezing wind we
pull ourselves
tighter
and breathe