Old poem, one of the first I wrote in a Creative Writing class almost four years ago. |
Old Winter Her words fall frozen and frostbitten like lumps of lead from bitter bruise-purple lips to shatter on the hard December earth There's another run in her black pantyhose and the scuffed black purse with the ugly brass clasps and the woven leather strap that's been broken for years finally just snapped and she says she's lost everything... You can almost see the alcohol on her breath in the vapor that rises like a little prayer to the banshee moon that hangs in the sky like a sponge soaked in iodine and everything reminds me of him anymore as the snow leaks out of the tired gray skies and falls so loud my head aches and I can't see my reflection in the ice-black lake water distorted so much I almost look beautiful with eyes uncried and face unmarked. She screams for me from the blackened doorway in that awful ice-voice like a million-million rusty hinges... I don't even try to pretend I don't hear her anymore it's just not worth it like planting seeds in the wrong season nothing grows on my island of ice and my face is glazed with salt and tears shiny in the blue-black starlight and he's gone away forever. Copyright Erin Pfeiffer, 2005. |