The snow is falling, beads of ice
hang, the sky as white as the ice
and as hard. Sitting on the floor

the carpet specked with lint
the couch sagging. The snow, white,
is falling. When we think about our

mothers, who is happy? We must console
ourselves, our own hands soothing

foreheads hot with fever, cooled
with snow. We wish for the blessing
of time. We burn a candle to measure

the afternoon. Who are if we are not
loved? Am I a set of rags
in a paper bag? White ashes, scattered

on the lawn, buried in a teacup? Each flake
holds to the next, melting a little for each other,
holding back from the hardness of ice.

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Mary Grimm has mostly published fiction, but she’s had poems in Lucid Stone and Pleiades. She teaches creative writing at Case Western Reserve University and is working on a novel about ghost hunters.
Website: http://www.novelontoast.blogspot.com
 

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