Grasping At Remains

I remember standing in a snowy embankment in the middle of a blizzard.

Wearing five layers of socks, grasping at hands and laughing until water froze against my cheeks.

I remember thinking I could freeze to death.

Imprints of our bodies making snow angels in the white sleet.

I raise and lower the apartment blinds for hours, look through dimmed light balconies from the third floor.

I am drenched in sunlight.

Sweat forming on my upper lip, the large industrial fan blowing in more heat from the east village.

I’m not sure what to call it anymore, this want, this never-ending escape from monotony.

Sometimes the healing doesn’t feel like healing.

And when I ask you how you’ve been these past two years, I mean to say I love you I love you I love you.

Everyone I know is being eaten alive.

I grasp at the remains, assemble bones together like a play-thing.

I watch you snuff a flame, only to relight it again when the wick is burnt out.

Why are you always falling asleep hungry for something else?

How to let go. How to come back. How to hold water in your hands for months.

I write a love that is like this into every possible universe.

Fantasize the hunger spilling from my gut, desire carved into knuckles.

I yearn for time to change it.

Anger seizes this love and hangs it on a wire to dry, takes oranges and reduces them to pulp in a closed fist.

I stand in the kitchen and stare at the headlights below, until the world is blinding and I can only make out the shapes of things.

It is not kind to me as winter closes in.

I will be kind to you for as long as the sun rises.