i.
heavy-layered blankets when i wake up as something sharp trying to remember how to breathe, and the darkness of the night to hide how i’m not a safe thing anymore, and how the stars watching me through the window anchors me more to my humanity than anything else i can remember in this lifetime

ii.
burnt-gold rust-stained leaves crackling beneath my boots like a campfire, like warmth in darkness among blurred faces and laughter settling around my shoulders like an embrace even in the crisp cold miles and years away from memories that still serve to comfort in the absence of company

iii.
stories of wild animals searching out humans for help as if we are some sort of fae willing to assist only as it amuses us or as whim guides us (but in the end only serving to remind us that we are no better than beasts looking up to the universe in hope that there is an equal equivalent somewhere, the timid-quivering desperate belief that we aren’t alone)

iv.
milkshakes at five am held high to toast the rising sun as we sit on your iced-over roof in our t-shirts with barbed-wire words misting in the air before us as a cacophony of dissent rising with the morning fog from between our teeth

v.
this burning terror in my chest akin to the winter sunset consuming the western sky because it tells me i’m afraid but that means i’m alive

h.f.m.