the muffler smoke does lovingly choke the community college s dusk parking lot the potholes soak because the ice broke and jarringly jolt us till the shocks are shot and the carports are revving with warming up motors with throats that are heavily fuming exhaust and i taste who i am when i breathe the odors and all that was feral is sterile with frost and it feels so good feels so holy my world should soon control me and i know that i would like it to the shrink wrapped cosmetics and cardboard aesthetics of department store picture frame inserts that my mother keeps under a sink in a cupboard with her high school diploma and it hurts to try to keep all our treasures intact for forever in fact they are cluttered and muttering sighs the pipes froze and ruptured and so now her cupboard is full of possessions that she can t keep dry i see wild geese in the drainage ditch east of the hotel chains behind thunderbird lanes when i go do some banking rigidly thanking what the frigidness deems and the extremes it contains and the funeral home pharmacy bar and grill are to see me to the white and bright sports domes of youth but all that was docile s now frozen and hostilely clenching her denture where once was a tooth behind the home depot parking lot the cold woods decay the homeless they go and squat and wrestle their way the old lovers spurn and the new lovers enter the bitter night burns in the bottle return s sticky center where the dealerships garishly light up the parish where we wore catholic uniforms from k to 8 the winter it frigidly deals out a litany of auto parts from car wrecks at the secretary of state dealerships dealerships in the night townships where my allergist s magazines were from the late 1990s when dealerships dealt out pleated pant children belting in lots shelter their snow boots in sweltering showrooms or a storage space that radiates ten thousand watts and then i ll meet you out where the outlet malls turn to black holes i ll greet you cradling obsolete remote controls to television sets in entertainment cabinets from lost living rooms of trampled carpets of vhs sun bleached cassettes and teenage trophies of plastic soccer nets and the clip art signs are cartoonish on diners which are actually grimmer than hell in the night and a bright cvs might make me obsess but at least i have found what is mine in the light and it feels so pure feels so singular still and sure that s the thing you were meant to see when you went through the dimming world those blaring bugs wouldn t leave me alone and it s not that i deserved their letting the autumn tugs and the summer moans and pretty soon winter was setting and if safety is the one thing i knew never would harm me last hot fall i put all mine in a salvation army on the borderline of losing my mind and pitifully making excuses on the borderline of sweetness i find in rhode island and massachusetts