I have grown tall,
but I still feel weak-
nesses.
I have romantic wit-
nesses to read my
stained palm.
I have empty Christ-
mases.
His-
tory encom-
passes the past year,
a drama-
tic, unrepeatable year of careless- and thoughtless-
nesses.

My thinking is in pieces.

I strain to see past the bar-
nacles in the snow
from this mollusk lazy-
ness
I feel
hope-
ful that I will wake up in the quiet-
ness before I set all this sad-
ness into motion,
before my cookie crumbled,
before I began to stumble
off.

This year was
hard
as a heavy rock
band and is frozen in my mind.
Wouldn’t it be nice
if the next year brings
more warmth and soft-
nesses in a nest
of kind-
nesses?

I’ll take that next
year
in pieces
at a time.