"Moth," by Jackson Holbert. From Winter Stranger, 2023.

Today I will sit in the grass and smell the sunlight. I will leave the pills in their bottles, I will leave the bottles by my bed. I will walk to the insane river. I will let the crazy wind cut and curve around me. I will close my eyes and dream of medical sewage poisoning the river a hundred miles upstream. And somewhere in all that trash there is a little hit of morphine. I will think if nothing ever leaves then the wind is full of all the smoke I ever blew. And if nothing ever leaves does that mean I’m still dopesick at fifteen, telling my parents the flu is going around? If I am then so what. I am also walking through the cemetery at dawn, friends on both sides of me—our little drunken army marching out of the night. If I am, then so what. I am also lying in my bed at twenty-two staring so deeply at the bark beetle-riddled trees that I don’t notice the vacant light lessening then leaving entirely. I don’t notice when the night climbs into my bed like a terrified brother and the wind slams the door.

the notion of winter falls everywhere even in California it descends even when we can't see it it is like moonlight tonight the snow looks like crushed pills and I don't care about trees or mayors or bakers or fathers I care about the snow — how grim it is in the dark and how quiet in the light