Words by Tomas deMers

Cold

Cold is how it ends. The fire goes out.

The temperature drops, snow falls in our lungs, in our liver,

piss freezes into a snowball of ice. We exhale one last

frosty breath.  We’re gone.

Cold is a vastness, the planets like frozen billiard balls

clinking in the cocktail glass of space, Lake Michigan groaning

to its frozen shore, the sun behind a cloud of volcano dust.

Cold is fear, the crops not cropping, everything

burrowing toward the center, hoping it’s

not ice all the way down, praying that whatever

rules the immensity to which we cling will grant us

one more spring, one more chance to start over,

promising, this time, to get it right.