Occasionally, at night,

it’s fun to travel, hips swinging

through the hallways,

twisting as they do

through space.

I love to walk outside in the dead of

winter, sparse snow sprinkling the ground,

ice levitated over the pavement, half-melted along the

sexy curb line, the outline of what used to be

a thin, hard stream of reliability.

Occasionally, as I say,

I amble along for long moments.

The smell of ice is like nothing else I know.

Ice on the ground brings power,

maybe the blood factor,

I’ve always found ice to smell peculiarly

like blood, those vertebral forces.

I love to hear that crunch crunch sound that ice makes

under my soles;

sound only resonates this way in winter.

It’s so quiet, everyone is locked away,

folded up like contortionists in boxes, filling

closets, affecting comfort.

Everything is so acute, sometimes

I feel sick with it, razor blade cold in my ears.

We’re so damned close to everything;

the stars, the trees, the pavement and the ice,

melting, dripping,

then under white, round beads of salt.

I feel like opening my legs and straddling it all,

the moon and the long streets filled

with running water and small rocks,

the little bits of snow.

I’d like to absorb them all in this way,

hug them momentarily in this rude fashion,

struggling to keep them all in.

I’m a single mother with seven grocery bags.

It’s not enough to inhale so deeply that

my head becomes sore with it; my lungs

like iron or fat hospital rubber.

I need to go home and sleep in my own bed,

find out why winter is

necessary for recognition.

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Assistant Editor: Zenna James/Editor: Rachel Nussbaum

{Photo: Photobucket}