A Way Out. Poem by Alison Rosalie

i wear a hulking, sodden sadness like
a wet fur coat, a generation of drenched, dead
ferrets draped heavily around my frame.
i walk with it through a foggy field while snow
sends strings of my hair snapping, whipping
wildly in the howling wind, wrapping
blankets of ice around evergreens,
paling paper birch to ghosts.
the fur of my jacket is matted, it stinks
in clumps of wet frozen clots,
pressing cold clammy dampness
against my prickling skin.
but i cannot remove it in the blistering
wind, bellowing the yell of an infant,
incessantly prodding, like pins and needles,
the dappling of the rose dotted across my cheeks.

i trudge on in hesitance that finds reasons
to be so uncertain under each step through
snow rising like yeast in a heated oven,
like devils in a swelling hell,
threatening to pull me downwards
to the frozen ground to
twist in persisting self-pity, coated in snow,
quieting me to sleep under a blanket of hail
in shivering currents of giving up.
were it not too cold to cry i’d sigh
a soft lazy lullaby to relieve the tears
in the creases of my eyes but if
i were to let them fall they’d separate
in small twisting streams
frosty down my flushed cheeks,
dampening my sopping spirits further
in the wet of my winter shell.

dusty morning light drifts dully
through the pines of spiny trees,
shining lazily like a flashlight
through the thick blanched static air.
it displays an illusion of hope like
it could melt the icy landscape
with it’s barely perforating rays
of listless illumination, worn-out
after decades of pouring melting light
onto blindingly white banks of ice
to wash out the aftermath of
a temperamental winter. tired,
it barely tries in useless luminosity
to outshine, overblow the snowstorm
with a dim indolent glow, but it knows
the snow, it keeps blowing, the winds
keep flowing, coating me in hoarfrost.

but in these breezes of evil, of demons
creeping within me like crackling ice
gathering my skin into goosebumps
that grow under the frosty sopping
of unpassing sadness; in this
trudge through gut-puckering gusts,
through knee deep sheets
of thick shimmering misery,
barely there daylight calls me with
the shadows born from it’s diffractions,
whispering in raspy beckonings:
night it has not tumbled out like
black enveloping blankets, moon
it has not bounced down puncturing
midnight like a hole-punch.
day looms on in lit leadership
and all i can follow is the light.