Hush

Walking home that day I pressed my face into the fresh snow

piled on a pine bough so I could see the print of myself asleep.

I met her at my house. Down in the basement I put a record on.

I lay beside her on the floor. I touched her hair.

There in the contours and shadow we recognized each other.

Our bones nearly grown, she closed the door.

The taste of cherry chapstick, the clench, the release.

Upstairs my stepmother’s wooden sandals clicked across the kitchen floor.

The dryer buzzed, then stopped. The music uncoiled and filled in.

Everything worth doing is worth being terrified by.

In the static silence she reached out and dropped the needle to the groove.

That became the refrain we couldn’t turn away from—

like the threshold and the decade and the nameless thing we’d done.