Hypothermia

Hypothermia / Joshua Alan Sturgill

Dying of Cold, your body goes
through checklists of despair;
its bureaucratic strata must
confirm the icy air

Queued in Cold’s bleak waiting room,
nonsense questions nag the mind:
why should eyes reach hopefully,
when fingertips are blind?

And organs test for licensure,
to qualify as stones:
1.) Feet are earth on earth. Explain.
2.) What metal are bones?

Starting from the extremities
credentials are assigned,
but Cold determines what you keep
and what you leave behind.

Ideas of how you could have lived
relinquished in due course
— do present wishes ever win
their fight with past remorse?

And lastly in its toneless voice,
regarding memories:
Cold confiscates them, saying sand
must never blame the sea