January

January · Christopher Buckley for Aunt Shelly There is a time in the year for us— we come to life under a hard star, come to trouble in a blood-thin month. Daylight soaked in a shawl of mist, feeling gone from hands, color from leaves, and in your yard the roots of maple trees made fists beneath ground bone-sore with iceraspberry briars thinned up the house-side like blood vessels broken in a cheek. You watched for nothing through the window, thought of your daughter and counted the indifferent rabbits slipping across snow. Your love went out to the cherry sapling staked and bound with the sash of your dress, its few boughs shaking like your will. There was the last day and a dark rain blowing with the months of uneven sleep, your waist gone to a girl's from worry. Cold face to face, the lives kiss-out, and we tell sorrows down the train-years, love with some photographs losing light. Bitter herbs break the earth of our enduring and there is the heart that actually bursts and leaves us holding our own . . . The Missouri Review · 45 ...