A Very Good Morning To You

I left the sanctuary in the morning

When the sun had yet to rise and the golden ring

Of new dreams had yet to come fill my eyes.

I was all sardonic tones and cloudy skies

But the bitter, unrelenting blanket of night in my cup

Gave me the energy to leave the wooden frame and look up.

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To my horrendous surprise the warm, welcoming

Arms of summer had gone and died.

While I slept, the world had shifted

And somehow, I had been gifted

The change of seasons,

Ten thousand reasons

To dip my head below water and scream.

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I went out into the cold,

Still expecting the rhythms of old

And wept with wild abandon as the lip of my mug

Frosted over from the twisted hug,

The mutilated love of winter.

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The tears trqailing down my cheeks froze too

Leaving haunting lines or arctic blue

Etched into my person, lingering on skin

That ought to have been filled with sun and sin.

Instead, I'd gone pale and lost my stomach

For the mass in the sky that had left me high and dry.

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I shuddered and shivered in disgust and cold

As the wintry fingers wrapped around me like mold,

Unshakeable, unbearable, and pumping my blood full of disease.

An illness that sent a stiff breeze

Rolling through the untouched deserts in my mind

Turning them into deserts of a different kind.

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Glaciers rose where sand dunes had once slept

And the books I had once carefully kept

In the eye of the summer storm

I now had to mourn

As they burnt up, kindling for the arctic fire

That could keep alive even my dwindling desire.

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Before I could open my mouth to release a scream

For all the losses and the one dead dream

Of a wilted summer, the blazing eye in the sky blinked

And opened itself up, spilling its life across the extinct,

Pale tundra of the new world growing inside my chest.

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Crimson lines raced the pinks and yellows down

The vast expanse of ice and snow until a crown

Of atomic red and gold colored the landscape at my feet,

Pulling my heart into the unexplored deep

Of cold coffee and colder mornings.

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The arms of summer then, warm and welcoming, were lost

To the fantastical shapes of the creeping frost.

I settled to the hard earth, slowly but surely,

Knowing that any jury would weep for me.

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It was my secret, then.

That I would live where the soul had never been.

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