In this monotone washed out city,
The traffic moves slowly,
But still too fast to **** time,
Under a desolate ever-grey sky.

In such lack of color,
These days lose their meaning.
And laughter gives way to silence,
As bitter cold seeps in,

Through the cracked door frames and slush-speckled windows;
Through too-pale limbs and never-enough layers.
It settles only in bodies
Shuddering from more than cold air

Home among the *****-snow-lined streets,
And lonely leafless trees;
two-thousand miles from the sea.
The memory fades like melting snow.

Dead are the places that once killed time.
And lost are the ideas that enabled a hope,
That this place was ever more than a shell,
Or these bodies were more than cold.