I start with the hours
Those frost bitten fragments
Lifting them carefully
As if time itself might shatter
Against my palms
The shirts come next
Bleached of memory
Their fabric stiff as winter flags
That no longer swear allegiance
To anything warm
Into the smallest pocket
I place the relics
A name drained of pulse
A key without a door
The thin metallic taste
Of a promise gone cold
The zipper closes
A single icy seam
Like drawing a blade
Across the last soft edge
Of who I was
The room does not protest
It stands in its own stillness
Walls pale as abandoned altars
Bearing witness to the quiet
Extinction of a former self
Outside the morning waits
Colorless
Indifferent
A blank frozen sigil
Offering nothing
But the possibility of shape
I lift the bags
They are light
In the way snow is light
Cold
Silent
And carrying the weight
Of everything it covers