Dawn breaks hardest

2013

It’s colder this winter than I can ever remember
and whether you feel it first
in your heart or your bones
the weariness will cast its long, pale shadows
across your gaunt cheekbones and solemn brow
you’ll wonder how you ever got so old
looking in the bathroom mirror
at five in the morning
some things will begin to make sense
like how, in both love and despair,
what you have now will eventually be gone
and no one’s going to be able to make that alright
if it’s just not alright

You’ll have to make do
bundle up against the starkness of these mornings
ignore the canyons running across your face
in that dawn-break mirror
where you see everything you fear coming true
These knots you’ve tied to hold yourself up
time, with its wrath
will struggle to undo

It gets more absurd every day
I see my face
in fragments anyway
because I took seven years
of misfortune and pain
over a reflection whose hopeful ambition
resembles me no more