The season slips over the northern latitudes
like a tide of light flooding over a ridge,
and the nights tense like glaciers constricting in winter.
These walls shape a cube of heat.
The windows edit the worst of winter
and carefully collect our breath.
Hours work their way
into the body like cold,
and we are slowed into knowing
that not all stasis is stagnant.
We are as far past words as a fossil is beyond blood.
The life we shared went mute
the way windows on the damp coast grew mold
or room corners, even this far north, make cobwebs.
Our home is a birdless winter, our future
the line sewn on the scarecrow's face
which guards a fallow garden.