A poem is wrenched out of me.

A poem is wrenched out of me
in the cold middle of a gray, sleet-snow, messy storm
because you asked for one,
and only because you asked.

It seems I can never refuse you,
forsaken as you are,
as I am.
I can’t bear to turn away from a sincere request
even if it throws me, broken,
into the melting morass.

You couldn’t stop at mere devastation.
You couldn’t just swallow hard
and shut up
and break into quiet, contained pieces.

The words of loss and longing
that you excavated from the bottom
of a leaden box—
you let them loose into the ether,
forming deadly projectiles
that smash through the walls
of my only home,
my body.

My body,
supine on the wet snow,
my skin a fractured glacier,
my eyes a pair
of oceanic dead zones,
my birdsong voice so threadbare
it falls silent with grief.

A world there is.
No words, no art, no filtered images
could ever do it justice.
Justice has not been done, will not be done.
The tactile beauty, the landscapes,
the minute, constant miracles of moss,
the stalking snow leopards—
all sliding in slushy rivulets
into the acid sea of my dark heart.

Small consolation indeed,
knowing I am not the only one
whose mind is lost,
frosted with qualm and terrible knowledge;
whose agonized heart
cannot be willed to stop;
whose senses burn and yearn
like a thawing frostbite,
a yawing fright of torment.