Lecture

by Anonymous

Wind teaches us our outlines, 

the shiver of skin cordoning 

the self from the world. 

It makes me want to run, a bag

of hot blood, traced in silver, 

and fling myself off the edge 

of the earth. How tender 

a lesson in cruelty. Some 

dream of knives as remedy, 

some swallow snow. 

In small, bitter gulps, 

Love saves us, for a time. 

It ends.

Anonymous ‘25 believes that didactic poems are definitionally self-explanatory.