Winter Breaking

But I loved you,
and you said 
no. 
You stood there in
candy apple red
snow boots
and you laughed
up into the night sky
and the flurries falling 
around us.
They gathered on your eyelashes.

I reached for your gloved 
hand it slipped away
from me,
and you said,
let's walk across
the frozen pond.

But it was December
and you would've fallen
straight through 
making Jude
the Obscure proud. 

I wanted to cry
but feared the tears
freezing to my face
on the long walk home
with my hands shoved so
deep in my pockets.
I left you, I turned around
under the hazy orange
street light
and put up a middle
finger 
as I walked away.

I wasn't getting fucked over
again.
Not from a girl
in red Hunter brand galoshes
who 
wanted me to paint her nails for her.
Who stole my sweaters
to show I was hers.
She began to smell like
my cologne.

I wasn't letting you win,
as I walked away and
heard the crunching
of the freshly fallen snow
underneath me.

When It Rained Silver & Gold

She told me 
and it hurt
stinging like 
paper cuts and razor blades.
Like sweat in my eye
that time,
the fourth of July.

We stood in the empty
field, watched cascading
plumes of silver and gold
fall like exploding stars
beyond the trees.

It hurt like
St. Peter's arrows
all through my chest,
quick pangs and
gritty stabbings 
like back-alley murder.

And in my eyes
were still those smoky 
remnants of fireworks
and you leaned on my shoulder
a chill running through you,
electric,
into me.

She told me 
and wow, it hurt
like those safe explosions
we watched from afar
all alone in a quiet green
pasture, all grassy and smelling
sweet 
100% humidity and 95 degrees-fahrenheit.

Sweat dripping from her hairline,
her bangs matted to her forehead,
and I was drenched
could feel drops running down the
backs of my thighs,
heat 
not nerves.

She told me
I wasn't honest with you
there is someone else.
It hurt like being
a rocket
blasted into space
to divide into 
one thousand pieces
my body to rain over
you in bright sparkles
to fade away from you,
forever,
it hurt like 
the stars being
out-done
by sparklers
on a hot night.

Song of Melancholia Autumn

Something in my hands gave way
like the quivering branches 
against my window,
their cold fingers 
brittle and breaking.

What came of it?
A winter without a coat,
a wood without trees.
I stood in the courtyard and
listened to the mourning doves
cry in the early dawn light
pink like sadness.

An empty cigarette box
and the crisp leaves
puddling round my feet
in tawny auburns and 
dead shades of brown.
What came in the season's change?

A swift cracking along a fault line
the pushing and pulling
of the pieces inside me,
wedged against my ribcage
and lodged deep in my torso.

A trembling in my newly gloved hands
and my feet are too small
in their boots
it came as no surprise that
as everything died
a great shift rocked
my body,
and put my soul somewhere else
for the winter months
to come.