February bites down—
wind with a switchblade edge,
sky like the underbelly of something dead,
clawing at a season that turns its back,
half-winter, half-wishbone,
stuck in the throat of the year.
Sidewalks crack like dry lips.
Trees wear loneliness like a borrowed skin—
bare, brittle, bracing for something
that never arrives.
The sky stays gray,
an unanswered text.
Days sink like forgotten receipts in my tote,
asking things I can’t answer,
whispering, Didn’t you think you’d feel different by now?
Didn’t I?
The cold is a debt I keep paying in shivers,
in chapped hands, in mornings that taste like spoiled perfume
and dreams of other cities, where I wake up panting,
where I breathe out his name like an epiphany,
and let my eyes sigh closed like a prayer.
I walk through the days like a half-lit hallway,
never sure what I’m looking for,
never sure I’ll find it.
I forget what my hands were made for.
I press my palm against the frost-bitten glass,
just to prove I’m still warm-blooded.
February unspools, soft and slow,
a ribbon of time that never quite ties into a bow,
a breath held too long in a house too small.
And I—
I stand at the edge of the month like a skipped stone,
almost ready to sink, almost ready to fly,
caught in the soft ache of almost,
in the half-light of wanting.
March will come like an answer
to a question I don’t remember,
but tonight, February lingers—
a ghost-limbed thing,
a name I still chase in the dark,
leaving me unfinished,
half-written,
half-here.
