It never seemed meant to be -

that shedding my skin could be so painful

It only left me naked, with nothing underneath,

in a winter that last 7 years

1989, shes hiding under the bathroom sink,

in the back of the house, uncomfortably scrunched,

between the pipes and the corner

Shes holding her breath...

counting the seconds and bargaining with God

Gods in this room,

surrounding me,

but I can still feel the slightest draft

I need the chill there to remind me

that my floor can still collapse

The warmth could break all around me

I could wake up in the snow

Gods in the room all around me,

but still my trepidation grows

Because God was there for the viewing

God was there when she died

and he gave a hell of eulogy

What was left stood in the background and cried

for the summer that slipped further from me

with each wind that blew with an arctic sort of cold

until I found myself in a blizzard that mocked the fragility

of the one season where I ever felt whole

Through the darkness, a bathroom door opens

Cold hand hitting the light switch

and I close my eyes and imagine

meling into the towels beneath my feet

The cabinet door opens and I realized

I didn't melt as I'd imagined at all

Theres no more reason to hold my breath any longer

All bargains have been apparently called off

But, while theres still time, I toss her back

because safety exists only in this way

Where staying in her boundaries means

keeping this desperation at bay

I gave myself away to winters birth

with each contraction, piece by piece

I thought if I bargained I might keep winter from coming

Now theres so little left of me

And the dreary hallways of unkept rooms

are haunted by my fears

Theres an existence I sustained behind closed doors

that only warps into different years

And, from behind the frigid, silken clothe,

they dance, and coware, and rage

The only relief I seem to find

is when I whisper their names on page

But, Gods in my room with me again

where its warm for the first time in 7 years

But I can still feel the slightest draft

Winters still whispering in my ear

In a frigid language, she keeps trying to convey

That nothing could over power the need for her in my world

so that I might learn this art of survival

But she never made it to the funeral

where I misplaced all my past fun times,

where I can't remember exactly all the things I once loved

I dropped so many pieces of myself along the way

Sometimes it seems to broken to make sense of

The putrid scent of this betrayal

stole all the warmth that remained in my breath

How can a childs eyes reflect this grave?

How can this conclusion be all that is left?


Am I still the little girl that survives the winter

by burying myself in the snow?

Am I still in the trench of the bathroom sink

hiding in imagination so that I might cope

with these ritualistic acts, mechanical

that smell of alcohol and broken promises of love

Forced to breath while under water

Tarred feathers that once belonged to the body of a dove

The dull movements never expressed a human emotion

The shadows never contained a human soul

Frozen...slowly thawed...refrozen

and transformed through different roles

- Joanna D.