i saw a picture of manito park in the winter, here is the result:

the way snow looks on empty park fields
(on days too cold
for children to tunnel underneath the season)
reminds me of Adam two moments
before God's breath
made 'living' out of dust.

bones never break clean,
so i am doing my best
to stay intact
lest dust collect inside my own blood
like shrapnel following the fracture
from when brother fell off the stairs.
Thanksgiving smelled like concussions that year,
it might as well have been mine.
i wasn't yet old enough to understand
how worry
or care
can induce bleeding
but i was close.
mud is never ever crimson
but blood is too bright
for snow to absorb -
it runs
some say melts,
i call it fear
or cowardice.
but how, you ask,
could i fault it
for avoiding
what i complain of?
(stains)

i don't like hospitals.
coupled with holidays
and chills,
they've become just a little bit less than tradition
like rituals that everyone pretends
have died out.

could Adam foresee
what his heart would eventually look like...
...brother's forehead:
indented,
eroding

i said it would have been unfair
to wait until Christmas
my doctor replied that
i would have ruined it anyway.

does this obscurity align
with your bruises?
can you assure me that
i am not the only one
to break open
instead of tearing at the seams?
because i've watched humanity burn,
and i don't like lies.

tell me why snow is too silent,
tell me why wounds are made of noise,
would it be better if
those dichotomies
folded parallel
or is distinction essential
to our understanding?
i pray for black Christmases
and Thanksgiving in houses
devoid of staircases.

i might be a poet
(remember, stock in my trade
is organized sound)
but there are some times when
i will take the silence
over any slideshow soundtrack,
stuck on repeat.