It’s dark in the morning and the sun sets early.
I bought a new LED headlamp to walk the dog. I look like a coal miner on the way to her shift with disposable dogshit bags peeking out of a flannel jacket.
We like this routine, lab and I. Walking November streets, illuminating frozen Halloween decorations with blue-white lamp-beams.
Lab and I chip away at the coal-black seams of morning.
Each day is a promise of sunless nothing.
We shoot it through with light.
november jack-o-lantern
the plagued autumn dawns
a broken soul with vacant eyes
waits for a flame to light the way
frost begs the sun from knowing
she never lived for herself at all
carved as a diversion
scraping the strands of her mind
good things must falter
cold and gutted on the doorstep
we were never meant to survive the fall
