betting heavy on forever

february tore cruelly at my cheeks

and screamed

"Take a bulldozer to what's left here and pour lye upon the ground!"

an eye-flutter
before
the door clicked shut

I heard you talking only loud enough not to scream

after all
a scream would have done me justice
an act you'd avoided like a black cat draped in barbed wire on Friday the 13th

february pummeled me with a funeral dirge meter

and shouted

"Withdrawal happens with people too . . . better get some good rope to chew on
and a cold, dark room!"

With a bellyful of Fleischmann's
and the eye-glint of the great explorers

I walked on into the cold, unbending question mark called tomorrow.