Last year it snowed on Halloween,
and my body was so lonely
I cried while my family watched The Shining,
and went to bed early.
Now I can’t remember anything but bodies
and more crying.
I went outside for a cigarette,
trailed by ten people.
Everyone called me by the correct name,
but no one had a lighter.
I try kissing underneath flashing lights,
I try silent nights
I try special effects makeup.
Oh God,
I got flayed-off pieces of myself everywhere,
all over the tile floor,
all over the driveway.
Oh God,
the lungs will be the next to go.
We are all just pairs of lips, bloodstained nonetheless,
the comforts we seek in one another
superficial wounds on a much more bloated corpse.
Made of fossil fuels,
cheap and destructive and easy to burn out
The lights stay on after the parking lot empties.
I always get the feeling that
I’m not supposed to be here,
forgive those who trespass
they’ve got nowhere else to go.
All the firewood got wet last night,
and no one’s got a lighter.
Don’t tell your parents what I was doing in the spare room,
and how I felt like a fake prophet
and how I knew no one loved me
as much as I loved them in that moment,
and how I drove home with the windows down,
hoping the air would cleanse me
and how it didn’t,
and I knew it didn’t,
but there’s no one to apologize to,
that wouldn’t shoot me on the spot,
and how I don’t know how to pray,
so instead I just look at the lights reflecting
from inside warm houses onto wet pavement,
imagining what it might feel like to be inside them.
Mikey Roy, ’26