Cold

We lay beneath

these shifting skies

planning hopeful lives

in hopeless times.

The bitter cold eats away at the

colourful plants you helped to birth,

brightness crafted, stolen and then lost,

a cold world blasphemed by new greys.

You stay inside,

and my body lies dormant on the floor

empty stomach contorting in

anxious cartwheels some more,

the plasterboard coarse and cracking

curtains ragged,

wallpaper torn.

Outside, the streets are shrinking,

bodies sinking into pavements

lights left on and burning

through these wintery days.

The unchanging sky,

time falling in upon itself,

a decade passed within an hour,

a week of time becomes a second,

hesitancy, apprehension,

the ticking time-bomb, second guessing

every feeling or action,

the flame dying out, all oxygen expended

elsewhere, lethargic from the efforts

of breathing colour and prosperity

into this grey world, of leaking paint upon

interiors and external parts,

my hands raw from the chores,

our handcrafted image of the future

once glowing,

once a memory,

once a dancing figure

and now,

bleeding out,

hollow.

Another floating thought

absorbed into the grey space.