Poem by Jodi Phillips (for ARC contest)

The wind shutters around my seemingly lifeless body

I shudder at the cold that I now feel

Though I am not dead… dead seems a relative word now days

I feel the loneliness sink deeper than ever imaginable.

I take a second to try to breathe. To not be alone

But the arms will not shake from around me

Memories of his warmth… his arms around me won’t even comfort

He is gone, too far for me to find, at least it feels that way

I hear a voice… maybe not as real as I let myself believe

It tells me I am so close, not to stop looking.

I let myself hope that I am not imagining, that this is real

That somehow we have found each other in this ….

This vast world that is not real or fake

It is somewhere in between where the bonds that

Have held us back can be shaken off and all will be right

I shiver to think that this is only my imagination

I force myself to take a step… to move my lifeless body

To take one more day. Maybe it is all it will take

I shiver again but this time it is from the knowledge that just maybe

The same voice is now really telling me “I love you.”

The wind shutters around my seemingly lifeless body

I shudder at the cold that I now feel

Though I am not dead… dead seems a relative word now days

I let the hope raise from a place I thought to be lost.

Jodi Phillips