Empty Ignorance

You're brittle and straining

Transparent and weak.

A ghost of a smile

Fading before your poisoned eyes,

A skeleton locked in a treasure cove.

You live amongst valleys and ridges and mountains.

Not hills, rounded and lush and lovely

But thrusting peaks

Sharp and wicked and demanding

Living in a world defined by

Our fragility and consumed with our anxiety

Running circles in a vortex of questions and jests

The accusing and self-depricating who love to hear themselves speak.

We'd better hibernate come winter,

Curl ourselves away

From the owl's eyes and mudwasp lies.

Hide so the cruel, bitter wind doesn't

Whisk us off with the rest of the

Broken leaves.

Now why the tears, my tender snowflake?

They drink in your fineness.

They all call you thin.

Don't remind me.