Paradise on Earth

Winter seems to have silenced me. It is always easier to perish on the luminous beauty of a leaf that languishes, pierced by morning light than to try to develop any poetry around the slush.

Died in their crushed moisture, the leaves crystallize, then evaporate into purged to the sewers sediment.

I traded my gaze from the sky for that of the ground gradually fading away. In my own sky, Saturn to the Moon, Neptune to the Sun. Astrologers, you will understand and you, just know that my mind walks with its hands in front of it, trying to clear a fog that is neither happiness nor despair. Perhaps simply a familiar fatigue, which feeds my thoughts as others feed on candy.

I would gladly exchange my winter coat for a sunnier and younger skin. It’s not depression, it’s cold, listening to the unfathomable echoes of a cave. Saturn for drying, Neptune for the immeasurable. It is a non-wisdom that, like everything else, will flow into the gutters.

So it’s winter now. We prefer to forget its daily white and, at night, we invent a reality of light. We will wait and then we will reach Spring. We’ve seen others die.

I breathe in the cold air and fall asleep. I am not at peace, but I am not at war either. I don’t know where I live anymore. Maybe this is paradise on Earth.