there is no golden door, emma lazarus

it is 47 degrees ; overcast & the kind of chill that creeps into your eye sockets & demands to be noticed ; you speak like a true child of the desert & let gila monsters puncture your lips with their claws ; you wonder how you are cold when it has not yet to storm

;

you've pinched calendar pages into melting rosettes ; & they disintegrate as you float them down the river ; & we all know how it goes : river, delta, ocean, & then where will you be ? drowning against the bleaching coral polyps ? or suffocating against The Abyss ?

/ you hate to not know what swims beneath you /