—Beginning with a line by Megan Fernandes

One winter, I became very quiet
and heard light scrape across the world.

It sounded like dragging a chair
over a brand-new hardwood floor.

It was December, and snow fell
straight down, at zero angle.

The communion of the flakes
kept things in line. The roads,

with their grubby beaches of sand,
were the only well-treated things.

I bought myself oily black coffee
and old donuts from the grocery store,

cut-price for quick sale,
and in my claustrophobic little room,

my stomach creaked like an old house.
At work, snow heaved off the warming roof

and thumped like a heartbeat to the ground.
Down the hall, I heard my boss croak

about how the wind whipped him
like a flyswatter to the face.

Christmas music refused to reach my ears
in the same way that it used to, although

this was the year I realized
that Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually

is a Christmas angel, and reminds me of my father.
I wanted you, but too slowly.

When we kissed in the snow in my untied boots,
a shiver pounded through my ribs, and the cloudy night

flushed with light under its skin.
That year, I did many things very wrong.

I was like the young man in the parking lot
who, with a car full-buried in white,

and all the tools available to him,
beat the ice off the windshield with his fists.