I whisper into wakefulness,

the body stirs before the brain, the blood before belief,
I curl into colder corners of the covers to encourage
skin to come round as sound slips in just before sight,

light pours into eyelids
slowly opening, toes slip out to inspect the season
but the soul knows the truth; I bear every season
in a single day;

a snowstorm
in the stench of summer, in moments overlapping,
burning flesh on ice cold streets (Paris can perish you
behind its postcard perfection), springs of hopeful holds
that fall to less likely,

there is an unbreakable blossom
in this heart that covers the precious particles,
like once perfect snowflakes that have since been shattered,
strings that have been strung;
strung out, strung up,

turned to taunt,

I recall the harmony
but am a stranger to the words we wound into songs,
stretched into surrenders.

Your calls now drown us both
from the far end of another ocean I thought to be tempered
with tepid time, phone floods forage where even distance
cannot dissipate the despair that settles on the floor beside me,
a shallow pool of strangulation after the hang-up that always feels
somehow lighter at your end.
So much falls away,

so much falls to the ground;
shattered shards no longer capturing its distant promise.
I watch the snowflakes catch the wind carefully, glisten for a moment
before it’s beauty losses breath on the trodden tracks
of these treadmills that take us to nowhere

and back again

as the bluebird sings her song
and the moon, even in the bright sky,
still retains its shadow, ever watchful, ever wondering
when we too will find our time,
in this fall,

to fall.

All words and collages by Damien B. Donnelly