w h i t e

The churning orange of October skies

slowly fade to a frost

a white that freezes the earth preserving

the rotted remains of maple leaves on tossed pumpkins.

soil and roots squashed by boots of lost huntsman

blown by the same indiscriminate breeze that scared the birds

away and stripped the sycamore trees

A forest without birds sounds

how I imagine death feels.

a piercing silence, cold, and without color.

or loneliness

with its mouth full of fangs forever feeding

on my bones whenever I’m alone.

and when it’s been extra famished,

it’s like an ice axe swung at a trombone.

crushed and mangled

stuck in silence.

a kind of quite just like the empty forest through the panes of my window

now empty

buried deep like the pains of a widow.

There is a beauty in the quite it brings though,

only if you remember what it was like without it