The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

-Fog, Carl Sandburg

Muffled, the fog creeps in — relentless, stifling, enveloping all in its path. Time seems to halt, perhaps in reverence or perhaps in fear. Suddenly, you realize you have not breathed in days. Since the fog came. Lampposts appear in the grey mist as if faraway stars, yet they do not twinkle and burn. Still, they seem too distant, too otherworldly to touch. Buildings grow unfamiliar, hulking in the ever-dusk. The cold comes, or maybe it never left. You are no longer sure.

Disjointed hands. Friction. Heat. A flicker of life, and repeat.

The words freeze on your tongue. A lone train wails, unseen.

Shivering, speculating, succumbing.

You can no longer remember what it was like

before the fog came.

• [A poetic experiment in the correlation between the prevailing weather conditions and one’s mirrored mental state, inspired by Carl Sandburg and Ethan Frome.] •