Winter Skin

Winter Skin

There’s a crack in your skin
that opened and gobbled up
your freckles whole,
the freckles that hid
(from your dark passenger)
on the bridge of your nose,
and on your cheeks,
where your blood now pools.

The gravity of winter’s dry silence
nursed the moisture from your skin,

flakes fell to your floors of
jaundiced linoleum,
blanketed your favourite things
(the things that fail to crack
a grin, or a memory)
with a layer of neglect,
and became
indistinguishable
from dust.

Your sun-stained skin,
your glow: swept up
with a broom of gray straw
(that once, too, was golden)
and an oxidised pan,
along with all the other
detritus and dead things
we no longer
consider

(beautiful.)