Afraid as I am of black ice, the mice in the pantry,
and stale sorrow, I might not have made it through
a longer winter. I might have slid—not into the lake,
no grand catastrophe, but too deep into the air between sharp slats of rain,
growing smaller and colder and ever smaller.

We all entered the same nascent spring,
shot clean from winter on the first day
breath didn’t ache our lungs. We all lived in the same city, carving out
our overlapping bits of money, bits of time, space
hallowed and hollowed deeper by the month.

Even in spring, winter motivates. I’ve regained a lost sense
of smell, full feeling in my extremities, but I remember numbness
and the observation if not the sensation of hunger.
The neighbor’s yard, which last fall skittered with gorging squirrels,
remains littered with feed. Winter expects to be remembered.

I lie in bed on Sunday, listening to the church bells ring.
They narrate our choices—to live in a place that arcs with such effort
between sweaty and frigid, a place so briefly calm.
To leave each other night after night for sleep, to say peace be with us,
with us the staying and us the left, the distant tolling everywhere upon waking up.