Nothing But The Frost

(Guillotine of Glass)

​Static in the mercury, the sky is turning grey,

The marrow of the garden starts to brittle and decay.

Twenty-eight anchors in the fabric of the dark,

Dragging ghosts of emerald through the frozen, biting park.

It’s a silent, liquid teeth, it’s a shiver in the lung,

The heavy, plastic burden where the winter’s poison clung.

I can hear the air get rigid, I can feel the metal groan,

The sky is feeding on the field, it’s claiming all I own.

​The degrees are dropping down like a guillotine of glass,

Walking through the necro-thaw to save the dying grass.

The frost is in the corners, it’s learning how to crawl,

Shadows of the vine-death cast long against the wall.

​The cold is a predator with nowhere left to run,

It bleeds the green to nothing when it’s hiding from the sun.

Drag the weight, feel the snap, the spine begins to bend,

The frozen clock is ticking down, the harvest finds its end.

It’s the breath that kills the motion, it’s the ice against the skin,

Once the winter turns the lock—you’ll never keep it in.

​My back is screaming tectonic, every inch a jagged line,

The weight of seven feet of growth, a tangled, heavy spine.

They said the buds would return, but the ghost is in the air,

The frost is laughing at the bags, it catches every prayer.

The fabric tears, the roots are bare, exposed to empty space,

The temperature is plummeting to stare me in the face.

Sixty inches of resistance, dragging through the grime,

Running from the static—the thief of stolen time.

​The lights go dim, the pulse is low, the mercury retreats,

Everything I built is trapped in sheets of frozen sleet.

The frost is in the fibers, it’s learning how to bite,

And I’m just hauling echoes through the center of the night.

​The cold is a predator with nowhere left to run,

It bleeds the green to nothing when it’s hiding from the sun.

Drag the weight, feel the snap, the spine begins to bend,

The frozen clock is ticking down, the harvest finds its end.

It’s the breath that kills the motion, it’s the ice against the skin,

Once the winter turns the lock—you’ll never keep it in.

​I tried to pull the life away, I tried to hide the green,

But the frost is watching everything, the unseen machine.

The walls are growing thinner, the atmosphere is thin,

The thread of the temperature is crawling on my skin.

It’s a presence born from zero, it’s a hollow, hungry state,

I’m pushing back the stillness, I’m wrestling with the weight.

The frost doesn’t bargain, the frost doesn’t sleep,

The harvest is a secret that the ice intends to keep.

​So if you hear the metal drag, don’t look at what you’ve lost,

Because the moment that you turn—

You’re nothing but the frost.

You’re nothing but the frost.

(Follows you.)

(Follows you.)