Winter is Hell

It’s November and I can smell winter in the air.  I can smell Christmas, Vermouth, snow, fresh linen, rape.  The cold catches in my throat like tears, like screams.  I can taste it as it whistles and whips in between my teeth – snow, puke, the word: no.  It’s winter again and I am almost lost again.  Lost inside the loneliness of nowhere to spend the holidays, the fear and self-loathing of being alone, and the image of finding my clothes on a stranger’s floor, snow outside his window.  Hell doesn’t freeze over.