Say it: say that I am dead, and I’ll root my feet into the earth, unfold my lips: into petals: into your palms, shed summer from my shoulders.

There is a time for winter, for mending the bones, freezing off the dead things so new life can grow more lush, more violet.

The slabs of ice caked over my irises will melt into lakes, these lips one day will bloom. But summer has lasted a decade: I am in the winter of my youth.

after Jimmy Santiago Baca

Today, running along the creek, I have a lot to be mad about, a lot to pop open a bottle about,                                         the sunlight traipsing through                                         but the trees won’t have it,                                         their steepled ceiling refuses                                         to keep me blind to the way ice layers                                         along the creek edges like shelves—                                         bracket fungi gone alabaster.

I am masked for the winter. I could feel caged. I could feel suffocated,                                         but below thirty-two, air cools the clouds of my breath                                         to crystals on my lashes. They catch the starlight                                         and moonbeams and I am the fairy face of winter.                                         How can I be mad, all silver sparkling like that?