Thermal Mass

The asphalt was soft outside, a tarry black soup

under a sun that wanted to skin the world alive.

I slipped through the oak doors with a tired stoop,

just looking for a place to survive.

The air in the nave didn't care about the light.

It was a damp, deep cold that smelled of wool

and the limestone floor and the coming of night,

a bucket of shadow pulled up from a well.

The sweat on my neck turned to a thin sheet of ice,

a prickle of winter inside of the June.

I sat in the back, paying the price

of a silence that ended much too soon.