Comrade February
It was a reason
to knock on your door–
the ice cream from the freezer,
a bowl of vanilla
seasoned with pink salt
like your great grandmother taught me.
There are things
that seem off-putting at first
at just gone 2 in the morning,
when the snow makes a soft hiss
as it shifts and falls
with the spiked orbs of the sweetgums
behind your house
where they’ve been gathering for hours
in a jumbled, briery mess of stars
across the yard.
I stick out the tip of my tongue
in homage to a memory
I’m not sure exists.
There are untraversed distances,
perspectives into unfamiliar lives,
rose quartz rising in the snow–
things you must come around to.
Leigh
I finally felt you
somewhere around nineteen weeks
while watching a girl
circle around two stumps
jutting up from the sand,
her sandals crunching
fragments of pebble and grit.
It was ridiculous
with your father’s arms
around my middle,
his fingers longer than I remembered.
His breathing
came fast behind me,
and I could feel him winking.
We sipped coffee
down by the ocean–
frozen tunnels
of mud, rocks,
and scattered gulls.
A kitten
tilted its head
staring at flecks in the spray.
You,
your father and I,
the kitten,
the ocean and the coffee,
the fisherman
in bright yellow
passing over the shale,
cleaving the earth for bait
about a mile from shore.
Everything was moving.
RESURRECTION mag 