winter song

 Mood: Archie, Marry Me - Alvvays (this song & video cleanly encapsulate a youthful longing for twenty years ago rom-com vibes to me.)

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A month ago, I was prompted to write a poem about comfort with about forty minutes on the clock & a friend waiting on me to arrive at a restaurant fifteen minutes away for dinner. Using my voice-to-text function & my notes app, I wrote this stream of consciousness baby. I spoke-wrote, & edited the poem in about thirty, but we were both (predictably) late to dinner anyway. This poem is more about love & snow than comfort but I don’t fault it for that.

In these hours of our winter habit,
the sun goes down before we are ready.
The plain roofs vanish, the wind swallows
& marries the town. & the show keeps & keeps
going. The snow is an already amount, a stuck amount,
a you are worried about the asters in the garden
that have only just begun to reliably bloom amount.
How will they survive now? This bright parade,
the way it holds us weightless on the surface
of this season is a complication against our million
daily strains against rest. But your shoes are by the door.
The oven hangs open in a valiant attempt at heat
& we coo to each other: oh our dreary skies: oh how lucky
we are to be so doomed & oh with each other. You say:
this is how it goes sometimes, you know? Two hot strangers meet,
die young, meet again in a blizzard. I say: Come. Don’t jinx it.
Huddle here on the couch. Do you see? I love you is a language we keep
getting wrong. There will be no complications today.
Embarrass yourself in my embrace. I love you is a noise depending
on another noise. Sometimes: a shutting door. Sometimes:
a phone call. Today: a simple intake of air on one cold & trusting day.
Today, I love you is a blanket curved to our likeness.
I love you is my window-side vigil when you go, foolishly,
to check the garden. When you hold out your hand I hide mine
beneath yours. When you hold out your hand, I take it
& it's warm.