November winds whip through her hair

As she stumbles through the crunching leaves

The darkness of the heavy sky threatens to break

Her bones with the weight of its stifling cold

Her hair falls in black sheets across her face

As she lights her cigarette, obscuring the air with smoke

The room is hazy, filled with smoke

The fire licks her toes like hair

The soft red glow illuminates her face

It was a time of pink flowers and purple leaves

He holds her close, and nothing was cold

He held her so tight so she would not break

He shouts and breaks the plate

She had walked in on him, crackpipe filled with smoke

When he threw her against the wall, her body went cold

And she struggled to get away as he pulled her hair

She went outside and saw the skeletons of the trees, bare of leaves

She swallowed her tears and hid her bruised face

The situation became too hard to face

She felt herself begin to break

She longed for January leaves

Instead of the dark bare spines of trees, ghosts made of smoke

She tried to start over, and chopped off her hair

But the emptiness still lay inside her; so cold

Snow falls in February, she holds her toes when she gets cold

She tries to move on, faking a smile on her face

Anxious all the time, she pulls out her hair

There was a part in her that he knew how to break

She looks in the mirror reflecting the curling smoke

Of the incense she lit that smells like leaves

She finally leaves

The day she walked away was cold

And she tries to warm herself with the smoke

Of the cigarette held too close to her face

She left him, and this time he breaks

She brushes her new hair

She turns to look her in the face

A comfortable silence, their conversation in break

She says she likes her hair

Reanna was born and raised in Charlotte, NC and recently graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A in English. She is moving to the UK to pursue her Masters in English at Cambridge University in the fall and hopes to eventually obtain her PhD. She currently works as an English Teacher in her hometown, and over the course of her life has travelled extensively. Her goal is to one day visit every continent and publish a novel based on her experiences abroad.