Funny thing about the cold,
it’s always sure to make us aware of when
our hands are empty.
Leaves us searching for
a warmth that doesn't want us back.

It gets to know us best when we’re undressed.
It tracks our naked bodies between
idle bed space and the holes in our sweaters.

We’re left no choice but to
pencil in the details
between the real and imaginary,
as it nips our ears with frigid whispers—
plants its frostbitten doubts
in the warmest corners of our minds.

The only traces it leaves behind
are a lonely shiver, a ghostly breath,
and the notion that we can never
solely keep ourselves warm.

A disturbing lack of interest
has risen to the surface
struggling for purpose while
school work seems worthless
unimpressed by the standards set
or perhaps just pensive
wondering where the road leads next
the feeling that textbooks
only hold answers for paper tests
not physical, substantial assessment
That ****** diploma a chain
keeping my brain and body locked
to this spot, this location
when my very essence yerns for motion
for some cosmic lotion to apply
to this burned romantic
helpless, maybe, but awakened
none the less
even if I can't be bothered to
laze over homework
two weeks and it'll be no work
to fall from the sky
back into my old house
and maybe
her
eyes

Thus proving
beyond all hope
that we remember nothing.

God must be a lonely man,
Sitting high up above in his chariot,
God must be the only man,
Who knows why there's no love when you reach the top,
It must be so lonely,
When only, you are all that holy;
So lonely,
When slowly,
You can see that,
God must be a lonely man.

i write all day like an adult,
i am learned and i use big words
and i know how to accurately craft
a metaphor about pain and harm.

but at the end of the day
i return to childlike phrases,
“it’s not fair,” and i feel more
of a release from that than
a composition notebook
filled from cover to cover
with a million different ways
of saying that i still,
despite everything,
am not happy.