Deaths: 21 year-old male, January

it was a freak snowfall that night.

no one was aware of it,

and no one gave it much thought after

either.

 

it snowed,

and nobody could have predicted the crisp white

envelope, the carefully folded words

the trembling penmanship

the newly drycleaned shirt

the pallid white on hardwood floor

the wind seething the catch in a throat

the spider-web glass through which

a billion angels flew by

the door cracked;

snowfall

the first to gather

as a blank-faced crowd

of cold, detached mourning

frosting the entrance

with the stunned distance of grief.

 

                              [the weather melted into springblue

                              delirium, death was put back again

                              at its usual distance, but the bones of that

                              blank white day remained:]

                                                                                  "I'm leaving."

 

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