It is August, but the rain has got us snowed-in
and when you expect everyone
to be upset to get loud to cry cry cry
they do not. It is quiet.
The quiet hurts me (is my sort of madness).

The air outside
resembles the moon, or my skin.

In the winter,
the sidewalks look as if I have been beaten and
died coolly, flatly, quietly
on them. I am so white, I glow.
I am so sickly, I poison the grass.

But it is all very soft and silent,
I am like a pillow
too cold to rest your head on.

At night, I fall, devouring anything that I can
love —
when there is nothing,
I create the big rain, the arsenic rain
I stick to myself and everyone is hush, hush.