it is not so cold outside
when you choose to tell the truth.

I can see you quiver,
brushstrokes out of line.
a hole in the canvas
cuts into the edges of
thin, gray knees, sharp
at one point, but only on
days when it’s bleaker
and grayer and far too
saturated for us to decipher
details between blankness,
and answers beyond crimes.

when light becomes frail,
we walk the road blind.

I wanted them to see
that rightness is not
planned, nor is it declined
in the face of poppies
spare and pale, wilted
in a summer that never
came, fated to fall within
the cracks of one’s own
doing, the folly that shakes
up a storm in a bottle, neck
snapped in two like branches
reaching for dusk’s breath.

presumptions nip our ankles,
their framework unrefined.

Cats No. 131 and 132 of the 500 Cats Project