One of those goddamn depth-of-winter days when the snow is sooty, the sky relentless gray, the trees dismal brown. You force yourself out for a run and make it as far as the cemetery but sure enough your foot aches, you step in a deep cold puddle, and you’re going to die someday.
This chaotic black chemistry that is you.
Then the freezing rain starts like someone mocking me.
I lower my gaze and—look at that—the bare trees reflect in the puddle and the raindrops dream up perfect round eddies like notes from a song.
And just this, this slight change of angle, shatters my gloom. I go a little faster and lift my face to the icy stings, and imagine that, I can still feel, I can still run, the sun won’t come out but I’m not dead yet.
Read this with Skating on a Winter Night, my just conceived series of winter poems.
