Echoes
by D. N. Simmers


" Where even the faintest echo cannot be heard" Lin Xiuobo


Silence. Cold night. Numb hands have a frozen sound.
Crunches off and out of sidewalks. Glittered ice.
Snow. Stopped. Heat that poured from
vents, beneath the ground. They are fallen vapour.

Where the sleeping homeless clutch around. Like
insect embroys. As steam freezing, glitters, as it is
touched by the street air.

Yellow eyed. Dotted lines on a snow casement.
Winds bitter. Thick with ice.
Moisture cutting, through everything.

Night is the coldest. The quietest. Is a form of death.
It seeps into sleeping insects and the flesh as they
huddle together. And in

the morning, one and two, or three are still. Fovever.

This is the worst time of year. Now as the
clock becomes a guilotine to forms,
not moving

and in the morning sunshine will not be enough.
Nothing will thaw out, for the small, for the few,
newly collected. Dead.







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