06 January, 2008

It is springtime where you are,

and to my mind your breath is

the warmest breeze (your eyes the only

stars I care to see and your smile, the sun)

that warms with each steady moment

And yet, this cold I feel

(this winter) is not

the bitter tang of air through bare branches

as I walk, or sit quietly

with a lit cigarette.

Nothing is quiet, outdoors,

where my smoke and breath spiral

to mix with the grey sky.

Winter is not a dead thing.

Death, instead, is

the silence of a room where I once

had a thousand nights of dreamless sleep,

a cool sheet, an empty pillow where

your head once lay.

Days of cold, and then

This freak summer that

streams in from the south.

Honest emotion and truth are

unfamiliar feelings on my tongue

(and the sun seems a symbol

of the new certainty I embrace)