Winter.
I hate to say the word.
Can only write it down.
It’s another name for nothingness,
this thing I fear.
Hot coffee won’t fill it.
Nor will the thump
of a radiator.
Or even an arm around me,
It’s a season without trees,
without temperature.
Every living creature
looks like it could die
at any moment.
Of slogging their way
through the emptiness.
Of being one and the same thing.
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine and Porter Gulch Review.