it’s a winter night tonight
and I’m sitting in my room
in the warmest jacket
I could find
but my hands are
still frozen
and the darkness
seeps in from the
windows

I’ve given up trying
to argue with my
suffering,
I’m just sad
and with plenty of
good reason
too

but when I climb into bed
under a thick comforter
and still shiver
I wonder why
things haven’t changed
yet

I’m still alone
nearly seven months
later
I’ve found no one,
not even a fling
not even a friend
and each day it gets harder
to get up and smile into
the cold breeze

the stars have stopped
talking to me

the earth no longer
shows me her
beauty

I do not think I will
survive the winter
alone in the universe
like this

but that’s the lie
that I like to
tell myself

I will always survive

through  hell,
burning or freezing,
through apocalypse,
through upheaval,
through war,
through abandonments,
through destruction,
and even through
certain kinds of
death
I will still be here,
writing poems
for the darkness
of night
for no other reason
than to prove I existed
for one more
moment

like a soldier always marching
like an ant always building
like a tree always growing
like the world always churning
I am unstopping yet
not unyielding,
living, as I do,
in accordance with
the earth:

surviving,
if barely,
from each harsher winter
she puts before me
and always rising
greater than
before