your answers: chunks of ice
January, divorced from winter
It’s become a game: waiting to see
if the Hudson is going to freeze this year.
It has flirted with ice, this body
of water that lives between us.
Its stillest places harden at night,
but with morning, let go their cold
indifference.
It makes me think of how I discarded
my wedding dress and how dangerous it seems
now that we say our vows beneath solid sheets
of cool white satin. The promise made is a river,
and we drown below its frozen skirts.
And I miss seeing my breath, miss asking questions
that hang in the air a while like why
you didn’t love me enough. And so
I paddle a small boat to the center,
lean over its sides, sort through what
I imagine your answers will be: chunks of ice,
sharp and heavy as you would guess they’d be.
I don’t know for sure what I am looking for –
the child who fell in
or her corpse.
I grab both
what might be something and
what might be nothing (just in case),
hoping to discover at least a purple scarf
or a red mitten, any indication
I didn’t invent the memory of affection,
heat of breath on my neck,
a pair of hands warming my own.
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Really great imagery and comparisons…the end left me chilled, no pun intended. So familiar with icy jarring sharp edged words…no mittens or scarves to warm me. Really really like this one!
aww, thanks, kath! i am so glad you’re reading my posts/poems — hey, you should start a blog!!!
I love this post. Brilliant writing
thank you!
wow. this is gorgeous. “a poem. or something like it.” i’ll say!
thanks, miss!! looking forward to the response poem if you decide to write one!
Wow. That image of the Hudson hardening and night and letting go… always in flux. Yeah, that’s going to stick with me for a while.
oh, good. i wasn’t sure about that part.
People rarely (and much more rarely so beautifully) think of ice vs. water as a process rather than just two possible states. Powerful currents (pun slightly intended) going on here; love also how the colors just burst out in the last stanza after all the chilly ones.
i was hoping the colors at the end would stand out.