Winter walks in my icy flesh
Frost clings to my clouded breath
Regardless of season I bear
Some chill and distant wintery air

Aching in my January bones
I shiver and stumble wind-blown
Freezing and shaking eternally
Not even summer can release me

From this grey-shrouded cage of mist
Of fog and snow’s soft kiss
I shrink and decay a little more
I am no Valentine but February’s *****

Even in the death of December
And as the earth slowly remembers
Warm sun and bursting flowers
I grow barren by the hour

Untouched by spring’s warm breeze
My soul as winter’s trees
Wizened and dead to the world
I am more of despair than a girl

Deceitfully I walk this place
Frosted eyes decorating my face
To hide the gale howling behind
The china glaze protecting my mind

Dog-tired as an insomniac
Constantly afraid of looking back
November’s rain in my wake
Delicately cracked I am a fake

Lips whisper cold as glass
Unsure how many years have passed
I maintain my cold isolation
Frozen from anticipation

I watch summer spread jealously
It cannot permeate me
With hope and life like another
I will be ice forever and nothing other.

Some are born balanced
On a precipice and remain
Tethered for the rest of their days
Overlooking barely there
Mental images
Fragments of a lucid dream
Of a conjured up past life
Once etched on skin
But no longer there
They speak of
Violent reinvention
And escape
While the hollow speaks
And catapults into spaces
Better left unknown

Psyches wrapped in denial
Running the gamut of habitual sins
Perpetuating legacies of pain
With hands that carry
The burdens of forefathers
Tiptoeing
In the twilight of dreams
Willing for the heavens
To send a spring that blooms

Hearts whose pounding
Reverberates endlessly
inside of ears
Eyes that get darker as they close
Meet with ours
A look
A sigh
Ascertaining a mutual recognition
Of the familiar
Shadows that plague.