here comes the snow again, is it still cold?
you know it’s best not to believe in everything you’re told
some things change and something’s gotta give
some people do the dance with death just to learn how to live

here comes the snow

here comes the snow again, is it still white?
some things can appear differently under a different light
and there’s a different darkness, one that i’ve seen for sure
i’ve seen it dulling out the brightest things and cutting right to the core they don’t shine no more

here comes the snow

so i guess i’m heading out now, into the cold white snow
gonna try and find that new kind of light, that different glow
it seems so close now, can you feel it in your cheeks?
see it lighting up the darkest parts
melting the snow beneath your feet

here comes the snow

doctor says there is something wrong with your thyroid / you are known to leak everywhere / to take the shape of whatever / wherever you are poured into / you do not contest his claim / or any other man with his hands around your throat / before the appointment / you slice a heart / swallow breath mints to disguise / the miasma of desperation / slide a ring onto each finger / bejewel a somatic distraction / let the Gulf of Aden run ragged / from the twinned lakes / of shoulder blades / an inherited wetness behind the ears / you kiss / the mirror’s cold navel / with the kind of pride that comes naturally / to those born carrying history as an extra limb / to the sticky yolk of grief / you do not think you are a Good Person™ / not with the way you cough up contradiction / phlegm thick as Aramco / poverty's slick jaw / or how you gloss your mouth with a humanitarian shade of pink / dress each lie in crushed pearls / but because you remember the names of your brothers / never your sisters / your sister's sisters / your sisters who are an occurrence / never an event / never a shudder when they stop occurring / there is nothing to mark their arrival / or leaving / Hodan aged 21 / and six months / who doused herself in liquid surrender / set herself alight / her second attempt at peace / in the bulletin thumbnail she wears royal blue

/ looks like a woman you would powder / your nose next to / at a wedding / wrist against cheek / soft wick of her rimmed eyes / banjee queen / doe-eyed diva / dhow hearted / what did they do to you / onto you / at Nauru Regional Processing Centre / what did this processing look like / OPC1 / where detainees sew their lips together / silence themselves before they are silenced where women hoard cloths to plug their bleeding / hide from both inmates and guards carry the children of men who did not ask / infants who did not ask / an island of orphans / of what could have been you / but is not you / will never be you / from across the ambit / oh for fate's insurgencies / its sweet edge / the topologies of our lives / their sharpened sighs / soft implosions of flip-flops/ on airport floors / you dream in eastern time / wait for the hijaz to collect / the bags under your eyes / for her to warm your pulse / with her hands / her cratered lap / friends described her as a "gentle soul" who had been "destroyed" / by her time in detention / you note the alliterative phrasing / a velvet undoing / there are as many ways to be destroyed / as there are droplets on the tongue / to describe it / Hodan rolls in your mouth / draws salt from saliva / you think of the white of nerve endings/ the melting of dermis / grass hissing underfoot / all that separates her / from / you / me / is a slip of a generation / a fistful of decades / in another life / the war that broke you / breaks ten years ahead / and you are the one drowning / you are forgotten / in this life /

you rest on the pillow of abstraction / on your passport / the freedom papers of this age / your proximity to the bodies that terrorise hers / the rolled dice of your life / it is what it is / every poem that falls / chandeliered / is about this distance / its heavy head on your lap / its hot laugh on your neck / its doll-like teeth marks / you have never known a violence
/ worse / than / coincidence /