In summer time I cried for ways to

Forget and in fall and in winter I search

For ways to regret—holed up indoors

With whiskey and wool shirts,

There’s nothing to do but regret, and

Try and try and try to forget with drunken

Smiles and pleasant laughs,

When the first snow falls it’s like

A theft

Of beauty.

Of truly forgotten side-streets of

Sneaking retreats.

And in the frozen snow, the melted

Water of hardened ice, I feel

Every inch of me turn toward a warmer

Choice, the safest choice, to eventually

Remember and return to something less

Worthy but most surely a different temperature

Of nothing.

It’s my barren hands, and the perfect plans

Laid to ruins with the frost of the change

And I wish to god, if there be a god, of

Something better to explain, something better

To refrain from remembering—and why is it

The memories that we yearn and yet repel—

And why can’t anyone think of a better hell?

And why is it love that we search for yet forget

To give, and why is it love that takes those

Innocent hearts and breaks them in so many ways?

It’s those scared faces with beautiful written in

Graffiti, it’s then I know that beautiful was only

Once beauty.

The millions pace down streets and streets, the

Millions pace and pace for me to greet—

And they whisper, voices not yet ready to fly,

“Why can’t I get back up in the sky?”

Like the psychiatric help on call, I just

Smile and reply to them all,

“Purpose, I never felt it more clearly when

the blood slid suspiciously from my veins,

purpose, I never let it truly tuck it’s stray ends

behind my ears, letting me know what

direction to steer. And purpose, held me back

from my wings, my flight, my voice, my vibrant

heaven—in purpose, when I found purpose, I found

a sold-out stock of love with a high demand for hope—”