It’s hard to lay down a burden

once you’ve given it your own name.

Blue blood

belongs only to those with no need for veins, like a wanderlust that starts where the highway ends.

Winter is a protection racket

not unlike the skin disease once known as the king’s evil that could only be cured by a king’s touch.

These mountains

are full of hollows and riddled with mines: a geography of loss.

The way my skin cracks in winter

maybe I’ll molt.

Ask a vintner or a fromager:

few things are more festive than decay.

icy road

leaving the car in the care
of the low sun

The forests of my earliest childhood

are evergreen.

But fists are lonely

vulnerable things that can never match the strength of linked hands.

Lay me in a fist-sized hole

feathered with rime.

mountaintop pond

the blind dog lapping
at her reflection

“A dinosaur.”

Said with a dismissive tone, as if it should’ve known the sky was glass.