A Wintering Woman

This laddered reach; this quietude of sap.

Last night's red-orange moonlight bled over farms and fields, and trickled through backyard trees. My body's echo sat in darkness and wept. I tried to pray but there was no life in my throat. A certain cedarn anguish fell, landing like unstrung leaves. Poetry aside, I need healing and asked for it.

Sometimes you ask for bread and get a stone. Sometimes you ask for Jesus and get a cross. In this haunted dark, tree and time stood perfectly still. The last time was the last time and now I have no more wishes to bring to the well. Selah.

The grocery list changes.

I add birdseed to the feeder and wonder if anyone would build me another. On the way, the kids tease K. and I about where we would live if we were single or unencumbered. Truth in jest revealed a shaky bridge – one which requires intentional care. K confesses to not wanting to look after living things, unless it's plants. Not the plants I want to grow, but you know, whatever. I confess to never wanting to live in a condo, near or in a city. I cannot become a wintering woman who sits in a fireless room, locked in a house.

Snow water falls clear over greening rocks and I am asking, begging really, to be washed away.