making fire

Snow has fallen deep and thick and a cutting freeze has set into the earth around my home. I rub my bones together for warmth, for magic, for the spark that hopes. It flies up from my fingers catching the winter sun, one glimmer, a ray. I rub, I hope, I arch and look away from the light that pierces, that takes root in my skull and births a raging ache that curls up from neck into my jaw and weaves behind my left eye. I look out my window for the deer and the fox, for the red bird and the crow, for the rabbit and the coyote. A splay of prints across the white tells a tale without end. I work my magic, I work my magic, I work my magic.

the skin and the smiles
the bones, small as toothpicks
white as a shower stall and cold
frail and long
as an opera on Saturday afternoon
the fingers trace an ending, a line
down my neck, a line
from a song 23 years ago that still
makes me open
slowly

a roar then
a roar from the old bones
the dancing hips
the cold night the blood moon and the song
the tapered fingers, fine and long and linen creased
tickling the curve of the night sky
and crying

Crowded by cats, white wine on my lips, the winter night awaits.