Leaving the Snow
The ashes I’ll make out of where I’ve been left
will grow desparate for a water to teach glass an apetite for the dark.
The rhythm buried in a forest worm will fish a house out of the pearls in the fire.
After my marauding, the last of me that stands will say just the mercy this time.
I’ll want more and longer than stolen abyss can fake a closing hand.
Even so, up ahead will be a house. Little stars lend big into forests into houses.
The broken bricks will let me keep my fear of ornateness. The black trees will form knots.
Each knot will be a bad north and mute jade will carry the house out of the dirt.
My hand will chip a piece of black paint from the rotting gate which will open
as if all the ways I don’t suit the house were a memory of failing a kiss given to me.
It’s not a bad thing to remember what the pain made out of the wealth of others.
I’ll try to understand the spiral staircases. I have my life; riches can’t shield against me
The doorknob will recognize the snow on my hand as an old marauder.
The rooms will have the dark maroon texture of dried romance between long-dead velvets.
I’ll become alarmed and confused by where I am. I’ll know enough to know I don’t belong.
I’ll be horrified to find the spiral staircases are locked under metal gratings. I’ll be guilty.
The sheen on the antique furniture will appear only in the mirrors as they darken.
The strange faces framed on the wall will stare through the blame in my center of gravity.
Hanging pearls will, in their appetite for the dark, stretch my trespass to every wall..
Silence will animalize doorframes swelling their oaths into augury. I’ll be trapped.
All of this will be what needs suffocating as the sky grows big with forgetting.
Beyond the garden out the window will be the snow I never should have left.
And then. Just the mercy that time. The rooms only the thunderhead texture of window.
The day after will depend on children for paint.
Derek Thomas Dew is a neurodivergent, non-binary poet currently living in New York City and teaching in New Jersey. Derek’s debut poetry collection Riddle Field received the 2019 Test Site Poetry Prize from the Black Mountain Institute/University of Nevada. His poetry collection No Use for a Key is forthcoming from Sūtra House. Derek’s poems have been published widely. @derekthomasdewpoet (IG) @derekd84.bsky.social (Bluesky)
