The Wake

Fourteen degrees of winter,
the trees frozen in their stillness,
leaves still scattered upon the ground.
An atypical coldness,
one that smells like winter all the same.
This is a desert of homes, streets, shops and churches.
Its only color is the bright knit scarves
that adorn passers through.
Each body a small furnace
bundled to keep the warm in
exhaling exhaust in small clouds
that skim the shoulders and trail behind the body.
The sun erupts through an opening
shines down to defrost numb foreheads.
Your maroon mitten wipes your running nose,
as you look through the pieced trees and see her,
one of those people you used to know.
Like all this trailing breath,
the scarves, hats, mittens that have been around for years,
people who knew us before know things we never told them.
Sometimes it is best instead