the car was hot with choking steam
coming off the confused tangled of
my mind, which was wrapped, all at
once, in feelings of loathing, mistrust,
doubt, apathy, and blind conviction.

windows steamed up and my broken
headlights half-heartedly lit the way
ahead, but I got home as the sun was
ducking behind the spindly pine legs
of its mother, the horizon, and I was
no longer fixated on the cacophony
within my brain.

the trees were bending and shaking
and my phone warned me that there
would be winds to cut the bone.

the first signs that
winter was coming,
it was November 1st.

the sharp winds ran through the trees
and through my ears, straight through,
across the hills and valleys of my mind
even into the deepest canyons where
moral men fear to delve, and there it
cleansed me of my disheveled madness.

for instead of many, there was now two:
those selves that jockeyed for principality
and the settled self that I would one day
become.

each day the winds bring me closer
to the latter of these two end points.
the howling sound merely the friction
of a transformation pushing a soul
beyond its limits.