frosty perch
Credits to @plucky atlas , this is his poem.
At city’s edge, where lamplight fades,
In silent, stony urban glades,
And buildings lean with breathless grace,
A boy once lived without a face.
Not lost, not found, just was, then not,
His name like something time forgot.
A rusted door, a third-floor room,
That held the scent of stone and gloom.
His mother drank her days to ash,
A blanket curled, a bottle's splash.
She called him "boy" when words would come,
Then sank back down, unspeaking, numb.
He fed on crusts the stray dogs missed,
And once, a candle—halfway—kissed
His tongue, to see if fire could stay
Inside him, burn the dark away.
No one had told him when he’d grown,
Or why the calendar, alone,
Still whispered April seventy-eight
While winter shivered through the gate.
The school had sent a note, once, bent—
His mother smoked it then, content.
And so the boy would walk instead,
To train tracks lined with flowers dead—
Yet stubborn—blooms that clawed through frost
Like beauty mourning what it lost.
He’d press his ear to iron's hum
To hear not trains—but something come.
One Tuesday, in the brittle light,
He drew a house—askew, but bright.
A bowl of apples, yellow-glazed,
A crooked smile, a face half-raised.
He pinned it down beneath a stone.
He watched the wind, and felt alone.
That week, the ceiling broke in two.
The plaster whispered what it knew.
They found the woman, still and grey.
The boy, like breath, had slipped away.
And later, by the tracks, a page
Still clung beneath its rocky cage.
The colors gone, the smile remained—
Unclaimed. Unsaved. A boy unnamed.
A stranger let the paper fly.
It twisted once, then touched the sky
plucky atlas
rose marlin