receive.

winter is wrapping around me,

stilling my skin and bones, breaking my impulse to move.

my skin is a shiver and shake.

the day crawls from a crouch to a low lean, never quite standing tall,

never quite in motion.

I've submerged myself in music and musings,

searching my soul for a song.

now, the evening breathes heavily down my neck and I am to break from the ice to go discovering.

a pause in the words to hear a story about beauty in all the impossible places.

and, I wonder, and I wish,

can I learn to let this in?

I'd begun to memorize the script of the old days; the hollowed out soliloquies, the surrenders to stone.

Is this a trick of the light, this dazzling light?

I keep waking to a smile stretched across my dreaming, I keep feeling the weight of my heart being held.

All this summer seeping into my room, tearing off the blankets and languishing in the simmer; a coastline of gold placed in my palm.

a gift, a gift, a gift.

and a thank you.