100 sunday crosswords

this is a story of broken pieces
letting go feature by feature;
shattered pieces, ice rain,
and something blacker than sadness
turning from snowfall to knives
and the scarlet ground that follows.

this is about knowing when to stop
but never knowing the time.

because fingers snap louder in the cold,
they shiver and shake, shiver and shake
until the tremours turn to bone
and you feel it when they break.
a century's warning isn't enough to prepare for an earthquake;
a thousand years is still a blink when the last sinews
split.

there is nothing welcome about the open air
and how it bites your exposed skin,
its teeth sharpen and gnash,
dull enamel that scrapes,
and the bleeding won't tell you
how it stops.

just because you have spent a hundred sundays
pouring over the globe's crosswords
doesn't mean you'll find that eight letter word,
finally,
for a warning sign of dissipation.

you will never see the end nearing,
you will never know when to stop,
you will,
i swear you will,
feel the way the world ends,
just as those fingers break,
not with a bang,
but with a whimper.
and when we began to dissipate,
i saw eight letters in the lines of my skin-
my body, from yours,
it read
"distance."