this summer feels more like autumn
when life cringes from sweeping gusts
of winter winds and broken promises
when blades of grass no longer need be cut down
but wilt of their own accord

this summer feels like
falling
during a dream
and waking up
before hitting the ground

this summer feels like a final chapter
but life will not give me the satisfaction
of neat bookends
or denouement
before crashing into finality

this summer feels like a sentence fragment
i figure my leaving
a hyphen
punctuating the end of
everything.

And the moon seeps through the runs in my stockings,
Snow melts off ruddy cheeks and boils to the atmosphere
Patchwork skies and yellow air.

We threw snow behind our shoulders for lack of any salt
Steeped, stewed and warded off our demons,
Invoking the wrath of the wandering cars
And the moon seeps through the runs in my stockings.

A lonesome traffic light directs the phantom engines
The dewy skylights have yet been good to me
A fog of breaths entwined lift up to the
patchwork skies and yellow air.

As our tinny music on cell phones dampened the stillness
The lamps shone out to nobody still
Loud, jarring, paling the night sky’s starlight,
And the moon that seeps through the runs in my stockings

Our riotous whisperings
Were but cracks in the ice
Our cigarettes were torches held against
the patchwork skies and yellow air

This city is a tyrant
Its icy stillness grasping through my clothes
The stillness sears my inhibitions,
the moon seeps through the runs in my stockings

We fell into the yellow cab
Made inert by our indiscretions, plagued
By the moon that seeped into the runs in my stockings,
The rosy skies and clearing air.

skyscrapers
are metal and glass
melted sand and twisted earth

what are skyscrapers but
mangled mountains
and burnt beaches