late april

It’s late April, mid-spring, and I’m still reading about the ice on Lake Michigan.

My heart breaks because I love it and I’m leaving it,

I don’t plan to spend another winter here.

I’ll have to leave the country to get more north than here

and I don’t know why I crave it, but I do.

The silence of winter is fragile and personal.

Summer is a shared thing. Summer is assertive,

you lean against each other, tilting your face into the sun.

T-shirts and open postures, I wipe the sweat from my neck, and it is still freezing.

I live my life in limbo. Is that why I hate the south?

Everything grows so hard and fast and green;

I bite my lip and swallow, and I am always the same.

I like it when things are frozen and grey, and I am the only thing moving.

Impotence haunts me. The ice cracks and I feel like a catalyst,

like I belong.

Descriptions become eulogies, blend together.

I am this and I did this and I’m in this;

I reach out and I collapse against the city,

apologies always breaking on my lips.