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Letter, January It’s that time of year when the young men in the village sculpt the ones they pine for out of ice. Late last night, I heard them with their mallets and picks, chiseling away at the face of love while I tossed and turned.Today, as I walked past the statuary, my arm turned suddenly warm—that silly spot of skin you used to hold still thinks you’re here. At sundown, the lucky gals who’d been wooed did a slow dance around their frosty twins, signaling to all that they accepted this cold advance. But it was the others whom I doted on, the unlucky boys who stood alone in falling temps. When their would-be beloveds didn’t show, the men left their work to waste, each figure growing thin as desire must when it’s not returned. At my window, well past midnight, I watch the abandoned courtyard turn to slush; someone has sprinkled each monument with salt.There is the young librarian, her small hands now smaller, the book they once held now gone.The moonlight shines on her wet face and . . . well, it seems everyone is crying. Remember the first night you walked me home? How the streetlights hit the fallen rain-soaked leaves till the avenue looked as if it were strewn with pennies, paving a road of luck we could have walked down, if the sun had not risen on another day, the street in need of cleaning.  ...

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