A Purple Christmas

A fickle blue sky promised snow,

Smoke curling from the horizon

As white as ice.

The trees are laced with opium

And golden dust,

Trailing wisps of light like Christmas,

But much colder.

And I pluck the orchids, purple

As the bruise on her bottom lip.

Flashes of black bring back

A past too dark,

A vision of fleeting unease…

Yet she suffered,

Invisibly, at their hands,

Are we villains, are we evil

For forgetting

A girl lost in her palaca frost,

Eyes wide and dim, filmed by dreamy

Air. A mermaid

Swims through the frozen waste, and calls

A dream from my old graveyard guilt.