Into Rain

Sometimes I imagine you imagining me. In a dream, lemony daffodils pushed through the snow too soon. Their voice, too dim; snow, too deep. I might have made a monument out of that moment. I might have had to wake to tend seeds yet to come.

Less spectral conditions, okay? Sudden snowmelt in warmer temperatures creates a thick winter fog. Dickinson at dawn and other beautiful ways to turn calendar pages. Remember when we drank tea together? Do it like that.

For now, small pockets of lampglow. The sky remains as a blanket of dim ash with rain and more rain. Sleep gathers more easily at all the wrong times. I'm tired. But this is Michigan and she'll have her way.

Cannabis – Christmas cookies – cinder on the hearth. Kora asks to be let out into the darkness. Into rain. The idea that I have not yet poured it all out, turned it all over, or given it all away, spreads across my shoulder blades, around my rib cage, and squeezes hard.

Begin again.