The wind is too cold to smell like anything.
All it carries now are secrets.
Not the kind of secrets everyone thinks of first:
Forbidden lovers
Spies with disguised loyalty.
Instead, the secrets of tiny, perpetual revolution:
Skepticism lodging in the slums of the stomach
Unsatisfied yearning driving the eyes
Unfaceable loneliness turning a warm night cold.
The emotions that other emotions hurry to soften.
The trees in the frozen forest
Where you left me
Are masters of these secrets.
The humans are
Wandering servants of them.
Which am I?
When your words seep
Fearfully into the snowy ground
Contaminate the water
Find their way to my roots.
Which parts of me
Bend without breaking?
And which parts
Break without bending?
Matt Luedke
Matt Luedke is pursuing a Creative Writing Certificate at CCSF. You can often find Matt either hiking, heading up a steep hill on his beloved sticker-covered hybrid bike in the easiest gear, or bundled up at one of SF’s cold beaches with a notebook and pen.
Theresa Cruz
Forum Literary Magazine 