ISSUE 11

December stings your tongue as you spit syllables of snowflakes
into the air. You trudge
along shaven paths where leaves wilt, a bouquet 
of velvet petals, engraving vases 
too elegant for dried souls. 
The sky darkens into lapses of pitch-black, as snow 
pierces needles
into my feet, the cicadas’ hymns
filling the gaps between my toes as you swallow
a snow globe of white parkas on trees, their arms and fingers
dangling the last leaf, which you mindlessly pry, 
hold the carcass between your fate lines, let it crumble 
to dust around your boots.
You pry another, your footsteps
scarring winter until you have scorched the grass.
As the leaf's last breath smothers in your barren palm, the cicadas
inhale, but cannot bear to sing.