prose into poem/work in progress

Holy Night

The city was inflamed with flickering decorations and the streets spicy with the scent of  freshly felled pine trees. I am unhinged. Women with fox collars floated by, probably hauled from dark armoires against winter’s early bite. I am frozen. Children clustered before fairy-tale windows, tiny hands groping in woollen mittens. I am discarded.

It was snowing while the knell of the angelus reverberated from the damp cathedral. I sat beneath a large rose-window, which splashed purple glazes of light over me- like aquarelle benedictions, refracting through stained glass into the stony chill. I tried not to cry. My coat pulled tightly around my bent body. I could smell waxy candles spluttering in the giant candelabra, chasing phantom figures over the faded fresco walls. My hands lay rejected, like amputees, in my lap. I stared at the thin white line on my finger were our wedding band used to be.

Jupiter winter

Chilled city bearing lights

Winter coats- floating knights

Streets spiced with freshly felled pine

Tiny hands groping at the shepherds sign

Bells holler from the holy shrine

I fix at the the skin’s white line

where a wedding band used to be

My hands, rejected on my knee

where will you go, where will you go, where will you go?

troubled heart, troubled heart, here with all