The languid, languishing ghost of ice ages past relinquishes her grip on the mountains, and I am terrified of what comes out to play when snow goes away. Children ask profound questions. What color is disappointment? (Beige, child) Children ask stupid questions. Why am I here? I suppose it’s not the question itself that’s stupid, but rather who you ask it to. I’m here because Valentine’s Day was just around the corner and my parents were too broke to go shopping. You might be here because an angel sneezed. All I know is the cold is opening like a grand doorway, and bursting forth is an alien life that shimmers green and pink in the haze of inexperienced summer.

When the pain of my sinner’s shell is sufficient, I will shed it in a desert of my own making and grow a holy cathedral over my delicate glass body with the worn out, crimson heart. Sin scours the sands looking for beasts of burden to shackle. In the bottle of a glass of Holy Water, the egg of a dove kept perfectly warm. I was born to a theocracy of granite in a land as old as rebellion. There I will return to lay my crystal foundation.

Radiant sunshine, why do you despair in corners, your wounds putrid and bound by stolen cobwebs? The typhoons of life cannot banish you like a future degraded people, underground. The moon is writing sonnets to comets, but the sun burns in agony to see you brought so low. Release the beams of waxy brightness, and glow.