Iron and Snow

They say New  York is beautiful this time of year.
They tell me the snow makes everything sparkle:
It covers dirty streets
and graffiti
and homeless men that nobody took inside.
Everything is smeared with white,
its truth gone,
like a chalkboard after lecture ends.

I ask what it looks like in spring,
When the buildings stand raw and unprotected
And the trees stretch barren, skeletal fingers to a sun that doesn't yet nourish.
They tell me to think less morbid thoughts.

It was snowing the night you died.
Did the flakes fall on your face?
Did you catch them on your tongue?
Or did you just put your hands in your pockets
And hunch your shoulders against the wind
And never once think that you were a target,
That your life was numbered in seconds, not decades or years or even days…
That every step took you farther away from the life you knew.

And I think of your body, broken and still.
And I think of what is left of myself.
And I think…
I think the best part of me lies bleeding in the snow
I think the best part of me disappeared under the feet of a thousand passersby
I think the best part of me is lost—
Because it was your hopes
Your dreams
Your life.

And now all I have is this barren landscape
Where the buildings stand proud and empty
And the branches block out the sky.

I do not wish for snow.