Curl up raw, stranger. Where is your
husband’s thick pockets?
You must be one of those different
colours.
I’m dead on my feet, you’re
sleeping in the gutter. Five days
in February – we both struggle.
Half a dozen snowflakes
ring the city, one man
hangs high above the river
two blocks down –
I can’t get my gown down
when I hear the secrets –
you shiver under the ice
and I like it,
biting my bottom lip, I’m nervous
for the next move.
Who’s it to be? Me or You?
All is well and dead on this side
but you look alive –
try to get a grip around your neck, but
you slump over
the cold.
Where did he go with his large gloves?
Are you beating like a cat fish or more
like drums?
Your colour is looking frozen.
Don’t pull those tears off too early or
you won’t recognize me.
I’m sorry for you, sister, losing
in this land, but when I see your secrets,
I tremble from a cursed realm
and I am ready to fade into the big city,
9 o’clock,
locked up with something like a vacuum cleaner
and let you go.
