I am two:thirty heat lightning. Inconquerable flashes of my elemental fury leap from grumbling cloud to dewy earth, dancing naked under a smoky moon. I am a burning offering to the sodium lamp sentinels looming golden over black tar; there is tobacco sown into my every pore. I am the underestimated weight of fog rolling off the meadow's swollen calf river, the heavy lowing of labor pains, the thick croak of the year's last bullfrog. I am the first crunch of dying light, the gray tinge of wood smoke on chlorophyll burned red. The sting of my icy breath creeps into sleeping eyelids, through every crack in waterlogged armor. My frosty four o'clock is no place for strangers. The frozen silence does not know my strength. I will bend the world with feet of glass. In time, the weight will break my own limbs, expose their green, soft meat.
I am the green shoots of daffodils sharp, triumphantly cleaving the rested dirt. There is yellow warpaint across my forehead, a crown of blistering elegance glazed by wings of stubborn three:thirty ice. I am resilient and eternal—perennial—blooming to a cold, white moon.