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The tattered remnants of my youth are strewn about my mother’s living room.

January cold peeks in.

Everything covered in crystalline frost.

Winter’s veins crawling up the picture frame panels.

Covering everything in a sheen of 24 degrees.

Smothering nostalgia with throbbing, purpled hands.

The funeral was yesterday.

My tether has been cut.

Freeing me from the choking dead weight.

Of decaying memories that never held life.

That piled like dead skin cells.

Forming something tangible, yet unable to respond.

I, The orphan, stand alone.

My breath fading in soft, smoky whisps.

My eyes bereft of any tears.

My sadness peaked so long ago.

Back when brightness filled my life.

But vodka flowed in the shadows.

And the after school chariot never came.

To sweep me away back home.

I don’t think I’ve ever known this house.

Even if it knew me.

Instead, I saw merely the atomic family gossamer.

The capture of a moment with a photochemical process.

The dimpled smiles that can be seen, but were never felt.

The flash could never pierce through it.

The creeping film over a two-dimensional plane.

A cold sheen of 24 degrees.