The snow had been
crawling for days,
at first fine and festive,
like icing sugar dusted inoffensively on their face,
the earth surrendering
and inscrutable to pines.
Now it fell with a peculiar aggression,
thin strips like powdered eggshells,
the sands of an hourglass,
pouring down from above.
We had a new musicality to it, though,
where once again the
crackle was now dense
and radio -static,
a crescendo just barely suggested.
Time seemed to compress and expand
as the water in the house,
the snow pierced by jet
black sticks and twigs.
Our hands suspended at our sides,
not touching,
and our whispers saw the vapour
frozen in front of us,
Those of the world we've
returned to again and again.
I felt deliciously lan
guid and tired.
Removed my hair in a single de
liberate gesture,
a pantomime of intimacy across my shoulder.
I wanted to vanish in the snow,
a blustery arm to curl around my back,
a dissolving in this cushioned earlobe.
The next morning I woke up late,
the sun shuddering through our window,
bleaching our room an icy white.
I looked out the window,
a tree formed a leafy arm above it,
with birds punctuating the branch
I paused to look at one,
a mousy brown spallon,
twitchy looking back at me,
before pirouetting and haunting me off,
leaving me staring at a long brown bell,
a loud slice in our bedroom
window in half.
The snow had gone,
melted in the sun,
and this, this burn so bright,
the snap of a cold on my neck,
the sting of the salt on my face,
the chasm of the absence in our bed,
all would fade, leave like a bright
blue drop pinned to mortar,
diluted into nothing.
You