Cryogenic Steam

First I fell from a window and thought
I’d never reach the ground.

A door opened in the fog.
Once inside I closed my eyes and tried to imagine
what it feels like to be dead.

Somehow when I found myself walking the steppe
it wasn’t like opening my eyes. More that
I was slowly woken from the frost
by heavy blinking.

This is when the wind started speaking.

The sky hung like the giant keyhole of a vacant door . I remember
a violet canopy above, an alien shade, a tincture. I remember
women in hospital beds, and coughing. I remember
clicks of antiseptic dispensers, a bedside view over a fuming city.

It’s possible that I remember so that
I don’t lose the language of the dead.

Chris Sakellaridis is an Anglo-Greek poet and teacher of English. His poems have appeared in Fuselit, Cyphers and The Delinquent. He is currently working on a debut collection entitled Ξένον/Xenon, an exploration of hybridity, chemistry and foreignness