Face pale like the waning

embers of our last December

suddenly I feel how cold the winter

really was without your patient hand

ripe with hot, sanguine blood

warming my palm like a delicate egg

on the cusp of hatching into someone unafraid

of you or me or the dissapointed

last words of my mother that ate me up

like maggots on a carcass but

I’m not even dead.

I’ve barely been born