Frost

The cold moves in like a sledgehammer. Come morning, the gingkos have all lost their leaves before they turn golden; the streets are washed with green. Everything smells fresh, alive, this isn't how it's supposed to go. Dead before their time. I know the feeling.

Deep in Brooklyn, I walked around the park looking for a trail on which to get lost, for a bend in the trees where there is no telling you are in the metropolis. I kept finding my way back to paved wind tunnels, crying into the ether only to be interrupted by groups of school children learning about wilderness. It's not that I am sad, you say to the skies, it's that this body feels like lead and I don't know that I want to carry it anymore. I try to breathe hope back into my lungs, but they are closed to optimism and my breaths are shallow, escaping in little plumes of smoke as I choke on my despair.

Winter arrives in splendid sunlight and a knife to your back. It doesn't seem fair, you whisper to the Universe, but the Universe is silent in return. I find an old penny at the foot of a tree, covered in dirt but visible by a thin outline. I wipe more tears from my frozen cheeks.

Eventually I start walking, again.