i don't know how the layer of white still
manages to break me,
so simple and clean cut.
my shaking hands-
the ones that strangers once held and
announced their empty-hearted love to-
are wrinkled with lines of
someone else's pain and they
reach out to hold onto something physical,
something known,
but instead are taken by
a burning cold
that doesn't forgive.
cool, like skin long dead,
it stings until it burns and then
it burns until you can't feel anymore.
as if you could ever feel,
as if any feeling was ever
identified as real and there,
not like alcohol in their breath
and stranger's hands- cracked with
their sins- reaching and
tainting and