now is the winter of our content

setting: childhood desk; blisters of sealing wax, burnt out matches
song: don't leave your pets outside, casey mecija

i make my way away with school finished, plants whithering on our landing, things beginning to grow. the day was orange and of pomegranates useless, secrets that you keep to tell. rumpelstiltskin smiles and when looking down (waiting for lights to change) there will come a newness, a flash. a child, camera swinging, is walking against the stride of her footsteps (course uncharted, sails unfurled, words true).

and the honey-bee buzz of a propeller ride home, fingertips pressed against the moving glass. i am trying to still reflections & make clear (close as the sky) a blurred and hazing surface. the lights form linear constellations against the darkness of ground; christmas dots pool blue, green, red under lemon streetlamps. when we land at the island, i am suddenly afraid we will touch into the miniature snow-edged lake.

there is a charcoal realism specific to this place. salt-foam covers the windows of the bus to finch station and blurred pigeons droop by on passing wires. (slackening mouths, tired subway faces.) walking through the well-locked hallways of my highschool, i am untethered to the people in my still, familiar places. music, english, art and then home.