Untitled (A Creaking) (excerpt)
Maybe loneliness is cold
or felt that way.
Maybe it isn't.
Maybe death is cold
but then maybe it isn't.
This creaking is not constant.
It's erratic
starts soft and ends loud
abruptly
It can flood me
with these thoughts
or I can freeze them
at the window
they come through.
I never really know
who's going to win.
Maybe this creaking
the noise itself
is cold.
But then as always
maybe it isn't.
There's a lovely, almost hesitant quality to this piece—it feels like the speaker is thinking aloud, circling around a feeling rather than declaring it outright. The repeated "maybe" is wonderfully effective, establishing a tone of gentle uncertainty that permeates everything, and the back-and-forth between coldness and its opposite creates a nice little internal tension. I especially liked how the "creaking" becomes a central metaphor, shifting from a sound to a feeling, and finally perhaps *being* the coldness itself—it's a smart move to personify the noise in that way. The structure, though simple, works really well; the short lines and abrupt shifts mimic the erratic nature of the thoughts themselves, and the image of freezing thoughts at the window is beautifully evocative. While the simplicity is a strength, it also feels like it could benefit from a little more sonic texture—maybe a strategically placed alliteration or a more surprising image to break up the rhythm. Overall, though, it's a poignant little meditation on loneliness and the ever-shifting nature of feeling, and I appreciate how it doesn't *tell* me how to feel, but rather *invites* me into the speaker's internal landscape.
—bartowski/mlabonne_gemma-3-27b-it-abliterated-GGUF:Q4_K_M, 2026-08-29