Wendy S. Walters: Cold

Wendy S. Walters’s poem “Cold” appears in Issue 10 of The Los Angeles Review.

Cold

I ran anywhere without asking first.
At the end of a road, I met a door
built to close when I called. Years of doors
then the sky turned low and gray on me, too.
Before I could tell God why I shouldn’t
be so lonely, a letter explained my
lack of distinction in cursive: You are
not what I think of you, it made plain. I
unraveled the words then hand-drew this map
to rescue me from spacelessness. This was
how I first killed the writer. The next time
I started the story over. The next
time I let you believe you heard me say
this before, something like this but bitter.