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Winter
One winter, I became very quiet and saw my life. It was February and outside in the city streets, snow fell but would not collect. I bought snapdragons and thistle, got some discount peach roses that smelled off. I split them between vases and moved the bouquets from room to room while a violin solo rang out. My throat hurt. My tonsils grew blubbery like two fat snails, kissing in a slow arc. A detective show played. I wanted a cigarette and Jimmy Stewart in my bed. Nightly, I dreamt of epileptic Dostoevsky in Siberia with only the New Testament to read and thought of that mock execution from which he never recovered. Four years he spent there in the dead cold. I have two cats in New York and not so much loneliness. Still, I prepare for their deaths, but who knows, I may go first. Sorry, but I’m like this in winter. My composure an evergreen with the settled world that keeps settling. I trek the season. I arrange the dance of blooms, room to room, and keep my small perimeter fed and alive. We tread to March like soldiers, like sailors tossed into navy tides, into wave white, and who, spotting land, at last, grow gills at its sight.