say I'm Going

Frozen noses, frozen toes (the frozen city starts to glow), a thousand bodies tremble at the end of an island, and it seems impossible that every year is more dystopian than the last and yet here we are with more exasperation in our lungs than ever. We talk about living in the mountain, and you remember only how warm the sun was on your bare skin at the back of that school bus, how the silence was yours, how you were not lonely, only invincible. January paces around you like a hungry lion, but you remain somehow, as if by magic, untouchable. Because what winter doesn't realize is that in its violent thrashings of death lies the reminder of life, because in its threat of how little time I have, lies the reminder of how precious the time that remains. If I must perish in its darkness, let me just weave one last poem, one last magic thread of art before I go.

The typewriter in my window is cold, and the red wine in my glass is cheap, but they are mine alone. I can breathe them back to life.

I can set them all on fire.