Thin Ice

Houston 75 Beth Houston Thin Ice I'm thinking of the past ten years and all I can remember (besides wars, murders, rapes, hatred, famine, poverty, earthquakes, overpopulation, torture, floods, lies, and the life principle of one beast preying on another) is ten months of summers when you'd leave behind your husband and kids, and I, my various "friends," or myths of them, and we'd rendezvous at my cabin in the mountains. Now it's winter, and my discontent clings to you like the desparate snow to the hard black bark of something deeply rooted in its past. It's barely freezing and the old roof's ready to collapse under the weight of so much wet snow. Let everything collapse. Snow, snow, let it snow. Let the crotches of the frigid trees split from the snow; let the limbs brittle and break; let the root nestle deeper into the dark womb of itself until it hits the bedrock and cracks. It's all black and white blurring anyway, ink on old damp newspapers. But why won't you come now, when I need you? All those lush, warm, Edenic summers lie taboo words frozen behind your lips. They're white lies, like the snow, suggesting death to the ignorant. But we are wise. We've eaten the whole apple, stem, seeds, and all, and we know, we know love. 76 the minnesota review Ah, but there I've said it. I've let the cat out of the bag and it will live at least nine lives. I can see your mother now clutching her ten pound King James family Bible, and mine, hurrying to the bathroom for a private cry. And I hear, "Jesus Christ Himself would roll over in His grave, if He had one" (luckily for us, He doesn't). And I can see our fathers conferring in hushed voices, and our brothers and sisters pretending not to hear. Let em hear. Let em shout their disapproval. So we make an unusual pair: I'm Eve, discoursing with the devil, and you're Helen, shipping your men off to one distant land or another. Makes sense to me, the two of us. Especially now, with winter settling in. The wind is throwing clouds of snow into my face. It taunts my defeat. It beckons me deeper and deeper into the cold. I will follow. I will pull on my skates and dance on the water. Funny how it all boils down to season. We'd stroke the warm womb of summer without the least danger, though you shrieked at every snake, though all of them were harmless and just swimming like we were. And in the dead of winter I stand on the hard crust without the slightest reflection knowing the fat fish are sleeping, knowing the skinny ribs of the trees will flesh leaves, and bough, and dip again, as we will, in the water. But this is the season of thin ice, Houston 77 of risking that the rigid arm can hold me; eleven months of waiting, of living on the cold world that is ready to break, barely held up by what is neither ice nor water, yet is both; not illusion, nor fake; just the cracked mirror we peer into and drown. ...