It's November Again

This time last year, I was so lonely. Sometimes, that's just

how it has to be. Sometimes, I just want to cover myself

in tiny electric blankets & cry forever. It's November again

& I'm ready to cry. Each year, something different. Nothing

will ever be like the night I went to get coffee across a park

covered in late-October frost & missed death by an inch

or a centimeter. It makes no difference no matter how

you count it. I am filled with hot coffee & so much smoke

that most of the time, it's hard to see clearly. It fills my eyes

& my whole heart. A piece of flesh the size of a some small

animal. Some thoughts I've had recently: the brightest

thing in the world. The moon on Halloween. The kind of meat

we eat after everyone else has gone to sleep. Like everybody

else, I want to die someday but not anytime soon. I like dusk

just as much as anyone but I think I'm becoming more keen

on sunlight, waking up to the sweet & coffee of the kitchen

& all those birds. There are plastic spikes on my windowsill

to keep the pigeons away & I don't know what to think

about that. Things like that fill my whole entire animal heart

just like the smoke & coffee. Thin heat from the radiator

in the library. Frosty fields where I almost died & died again

until I forgot what it means to die or stay alive. It's November

again & most of us are still alive. This makes me so glad except

for the fact that it has to be said. I look outside & a black flock

of birds erupts into something that's never been described before.