A sky of one's own.

I am a winter flower

Whose petals are pricked.

Alive to the stem

In frozen isolation,

The vigour of foamy white sap

Is my only route to feeling.

I follow it, curbing their stares,

Braced to the tip of my spine

Where the skull's found sticky

With jam, that motherly

Dirt-ridden love of flies.

I make swift moves

To the window,

Pour myself from the lungs

Of the beast

Of its gross laughter

And contented triviality

Pushed up against my brittle ribs

Which shudder and snap

And run away on the merest

Gust of a phantom wind.