I passed by you on the empty street
with my coat hugging my body
I peered at you without craving
as if you were a hollow billboard
through your tattered patches
I felt the cold
and the dirt
the solitude
the aching for the death’s mercy
with your blue lips
gaping wounds on your body
elbows scraped by the asphalt
on which you curled up to sleep
without praying

I brushed by and didn't touch you
I didn't lift you up
and your dry-clots
I evaded them warily
because my coat was snug on me
and unblemished
and I rushed to breach the wall of cold
toward my own oblivion
warm and oppressive
devouring

you never saw me
you knew I spurned you
you knew that, blind to the essence of passing,
I drifted through you
and then with delicate strokes
as a painter blending the shades on a canvas
you seeped through me
full of frost and shame
and you faded,
dying
in a corner of my eye

the children were frolicking with a snowman
further up the luminous street
and instead of a heart, they stabbed
a bigger icy ball on its chest