The snow stopped.
Thin veins of white lay
in the cracks of pavement,
melting.
The smoke moved out of chimneys,
drifted lazily and without direction
a few seconds before it
faded senselessly into
invisibility.
The sun will not show his face today.
Thick gray blurs the line
between sky and stone;
concrete and cloud sift
through each other noiselessly.
The flag falls stale against the pole.
Ants litter the cold ground
on two legs, stagnant,
opening doors, talking,
gesticulating without urgency.
Brown and gray paint landscape
impressionist against the
thick glass of the window;
everything blurred, everything
intangible, graceless, sluggish.
The world is a cold, dead place
from twenty stories up.

My father used to call them
stitches in the ground.
He said they were
just like mine,
only bigger.

Big metal tacks of red-iron,
breaking through the brush
on planks of driftwood,
placed methodically
by his grandfather—
a patriarch I will never meet.

Miles of them,
pacing the landscape,
allowing direction for us to walk.
I asked how the ground
cut itself so bad.
He said it was an accident
just like mine,
only bigger.

I imagined an old man
drubbing stretches of metal
between wood and dirt;
green earth-blood stemmed
by scarred, titian hues.

My father used to call them
stitches in the ground.
He said it after I cut my arm open
so I could feel better about it.

My son is in the hospital
with new stitches.
My father is dead—
a patriarch he will never meet.
The tracks sit stolid
and indifferent;
red and brown between the
buried remnants of timber
stifling the undergrowth.

There is something in her
youthful capriciousness.
An eager vitality pushing out,
but each movement steeped
in a tender pride;
forced awake in sudden
flares of anger.

To see those brushstroke fingers,
long and carved like talons
as they paint themselves white
in clenched frustration.

To see those dark eyes;
ripping towards and
through you in
sharpened rage.

There is something in that
youthful capriciousness.
Love comes quick as hate;
anger and happiness
lined shoulder to shoulder.

To see those cautious hands,
soft and stubborn,
pulling waves across
your skin.

To see those endless eyes;
telling you everything
she never could quite
find words to say.

Love is a frail word,
whispered out by the pressing
of the tongue against
the roof of the mouth,
falling deafly outwards
and with little consequence.
It comes rattling out slowly,
beginning there in the epiglottis,
mulling forward and pressing
against the back of the skull
like the blade on a dull knife;
never quite hard enough
to break the skin.
You hear it in the slightness
of the air, pushed through the
smallest gap between the
front teeth and the lower lip;
forming the mouth in precise
measures.
Somewhere within all of this
movement of air against the
contortions of the mouth,
there is a wonderful lie that
we have created for ourselves.

You can follow
the path back
into the woods,
walking
over loose rocks
and balsam firs.
Fallen leaves, thick
with the night’s rain,
line the old
hunting path.
Keeping eyes on
the brush, you might
be lucky enough to
see hint of a deer,
hear the snap
of twigs
away in the dimness—
Not much today,
however.
Not much
but the rocks
and the rain
and the far
off lull of
rustling water
forever over
the riverbed.

You were a silhouette
in red from the taillights.
We were lost on the side
of the highway.
It was cold and we were smoking,
exhaling gingerly into the winter night.
There's something gorgeous
about you there,
underneath the lamp of the
streetlight and tinted red.
You smoked with the cigarette
high between your fingers,
almost to the nail,
holding it tight and kissing it
to your lips with a grace
I haven't been witness to since.
Your hands got cold
and you grabbed mine,
pushing them into the
pockets of my winter coat.
It has never again been more
ok to be cold, there against
the car.
It has never again been more
ok to be lost.

All alone tonight;
everyone everywhere else.
"Good riddance!" I spit,
"what use are they all anyway?"
It seems there isn't much use
for anyone at all, but that's alright,
that's alright,
nothing to get worked up about.
Instead just lay here,
try to enjoy the rarity of each moment,
passing by as faces on a train.
Do you remember Paris?
That was nice,
remember?
All of those pretty people
with their pretty words.
No one needs company when
you've got that.
You don't need company so long
as you have Paris.
It makes it alright to be alone.
But even now, it seems
the color is all drained
from the frame.
What was it she said?
I can't seem to remember
her face except in the photographs.
"Good riddance!" I spit,
"what use is it all anyway?"
And it seems there isn't much
use for anything anymore,
but that's alright,
that's alright.