When I say winter I mean a cold sweat, I mean shaking so hard I can’t get my key in the lock and loving it. At least it’s sensation, the flu—am I that cynical? I mean the greatest social indicator of all is the quality of your coat and I happen to own a good one. Though I wore the shabby old tweed for an age, the lining a ruined Venetian tapestry.
More like a bag lady’s tatters.
When I say fire in the fireplace I think how very hard it is to relax and have fun around family. I’m puzzling over whose fault this is—the kindly shrink said I don’t think you’re all that weird and I cried and said Thank you, I’ll remember you all of my life like the happy foreword of some hugely successful book. When I say that family vacation house has so many ‘negative associations,’ I wish I could stop talking like that. I wish I could stop thinking like that.
(When I say just-because-I-live-in-an-apartment-doesn’t-mean-I-can’t-have-a-fire I mean nearly burning the place down. The iron pot I stoked up for a solstice rite with a candle stub and dried twigs from the doom-filled vacation house, then could not get the damn thing out. Blowing and blowing, hauling the pot with a fork to the sink where I remember from Girl Scouts water will not extinguish a paraffin fire which then sets the paper towel roll ablaze. Great pieces floating around the kitchen like leaves of a particularly subtle Chinese tea and me imagining the headlines. There’s fun.)
When I say snow I mean maybe spring would have more meaning coming out from under. SAD isn’t my sadness; if I did crave the bright summer day I’d be better balanced, more American? When I say I’m a northerner I wish I could think of something new to say. Nothing has happened—it’s winter again. Still wondering what it would be like all
alone in a forest at night. A spruce lit with candles.
Originally Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 2.
