by C.J. Sellers
You asked what it was. It was snow.
I told you then a Once upon a time
about the traveling water–
how it changed and moved,
mostly never still for long,
then never thinking of what it was
or will be again–now a tear, now blood
from a scrape, now spit out, now steam
and vapor, now snow out there, on everything
looking white as these walls, white as stars,
as your itsy-bitsies, white as your eye sparkles.
No whiter! In the moonlight it’s nothing but stars
out there to dream of.
I told you some time later, time for a change,
better you go and get out, learn to be something new.
You said you didn’t need to be told.
(You were afraid to go.) I was ignoring you,
busy to read at random, as if earnest.
They stalk prey in shallow water, often running
or shuffling their feet, flushing prey into view,
as well “dip-fishing” by flying with their feet just
over the water. Snowy Egrets may also stand still
and wait to ambush prey, or hunt for insects stirred
up by domestic animals in open fields.
Aeons! You’re on the road.
Traveler. Just a little push, a nudge
and such violence to the heart!
Betrayal? Never-mind that it
happens all the time to anyone.
It’s this ice behind the eyes;
ice in the throat; all this snow,
who can’t see to drive? I should show more.
The mind thinks it has a right,
it thinks too much of… What? I honestly don’t know.
More nothing now. I hear nothing.
When I hear, I know. I know enough
to know I know nothing. Wait…
are these motes snow or ash?
Later still, you’ve changed into…
Something else. Strange. What did I expect?
Right now it’s not working out so…
You come home. I’m actually glad. I take you back.
I take it all back. I make room, I unsettle.
I un-birth, un-wean, even un-not-sorry.
But you’re righteous too tall now;
too angry and worn down from forced-being-a-man.
Soon enough–no, not right.
I have no right. No, you have no…
So now I know. It can never be
Once upon a time rain and snow again.
Now it’s risk of cold and loss and
I miss you before you’re gone.
You’re walking away in the rain.
You say you’ll let me know your new name
some day. But first, you want to know
the last words I’ll say before you go.
I have nothing to say. This time I let it be.
What is that? That first smell
of rain on pavement, I can taste it
in my throat, it makes my eyes well up,
it makes me want to rise up
and fall from the sky.