Body Painting

Blizzard

66 Blizzard I’d allowed myself to thirst and thirst, and when I drank from the cup of her body, the snow began to fall in flakes as big as feathers, hushing the streets, covering cars. It drew neighbors out to push snow from one another’s trees where branches hung loaded, and the limbs, suddenly freed, sprung toward sky. Others heaved, cracked, and fell, as if from grief’s unbearable weight. My neighbor leapt across my lawn to check the chimney, so that fumes wouldn’t kill me. Perhaps I will die, now that I have sung her shape, now that I have tasted fruit so sweet it makes me want to save even the smallest branch of peach and plum, fruit that drives me into the world with my shovel and too-small gloves, as snow lands on my hair, in my eyes, on my wrists exposed below the coat, snow that soon will melt into earth, replenishing the cup of her body. ...