Appearances

Time can be deceiving.
Even tricky.
Sometimes trickery.
Sometimes, honesty.
Tomorrow, which is, of course, actually,,, today.
I will see people I need to impress.
I will impress upon my face
Powdered dye, to make myself beautiful and competent.
They will see my impression.
If I'm lucky they will be impressed

Tonight, which
is inevitably tomorrow
already,
has exhausted me.
Has pulled from me
liquid energy
and replaced it with sand, or is it ice?

I want to feel cold silent ice.
but I just feel grainy scratch sand.
to tired to win
to scared to sleep

I'd have  a panic attack
but sand only slips slowly through its hole
until it's tossed over

I asked a beach what it thought of winter.
The ice forms
The ice grows and expands
The beach is pushed up
the sands shift.
A three or four foot drop forms between the ice and the beach,
as if the sand needed to hold itself away from the lake,
leaping down from the edge of the earth
to the frozen danger.
Climbing up, winter boots filling with sand.
Heading into a warm home
and here is why I asked it
what the beach thought of winter
because every summer the beach stretches into the lake
and holds it carefully
in a perfect unique basin
and every winter
Cliffs, estrangement, and cracked ice.