Winter’s brutal kiss
tried to freeze me
on my journey.
Not the holiday-movie winter—
the real one.
February cold that froze men
to park benches,
that took brothers out
with slips on ice,
brain bleeds blooming fast and fatal.
No holly jolly Christmas for them.
I didn’t come out of it by being brave.
I came out of it by continuing to fight
in spite of the fear.
By looking at the carnage and chaos
and calling it mine,
by owning it,
by accepting my part in the ****
instead of hiding in a bottle
for another day,
another century.
I’m no choir boy,
not even in the same cathedral,
but I told the truth
when lying would’ve been warmer—
like a space heater in a blizzard shack.
I named the demons
instead of feeding them *****
I watched them shrink
once the light hit them,
scatter like pigs from a fire.
The cold still shows up.
Still tries to cling
to my secondhand coat.
It always will.
But somewhere—
under snow and frost,
under bleak December nights,
under all that noise—
there’s a heat that lives in me.
It’s part of me.
A gift.
Grace, unleashed.
Something stubborn.
A summer
that learned
how to survive
inside a man
who refused to be a punk.