to make the chill
of a few words go away
takes only the most helpful
of people remembered
and I know when I was young
it was easier to let the
bad things flow like
water off your back
it was never a place or
time that could do it, but it
may have been a memory of a
person. there is a person bent on
a bench, slowly looking around
as if imitating moving in slow
motion. the day was moving from
grey to sunny and back again,
and the motivation for a reason
to do anything except sit had long
since passed. it was a day when
the atmosphere was not any
particular way, but waves of
different temperatures and moods
curl around like tides in a pool.
and the hair and clothes and dirt show
that this man had spent the last few
nights outside, on that bench.
and shaking from the cold, a jacket is
being clamped around by the
hands that are freezing. eating snow.
how could I not recognize myself?
——