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by Melanie Crow

The winter we looked for the body in the snow, the sky opened up swirls of white, chasms of white. I lived alone, listened to the wind tear the ragged edges of the house, the house that shook when trains would pass by. I dreamt of flatlands covered with water. Waving to passengers in boats, and they would float by, smiling. Old cities submerged. Wanting bread and a blanket. And a boat. The breadmaker’s on the island, my mother shouted. Then passed by, smiling. My brother gone eight years then. The storm arrived, descended on the town, a blanket of hard white. My friend brought cheap beer, struggled over in sheets of zero-below snow to my shaky house. We volunteered to search. They gave us rods to poke the snow. All winter, giving up the dream of dreaming something better. It was enough to listen to the wind, to feel it. We pushed our sticks in the snow wanting not wanting something solid.

 

Melanie Crow lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and is part of the PhD program in English/Creative Writing at Western Michigan University. She has published work in Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, The Ledge, Red Weather, and other journals and anthologies. She is working on her book-length collection of poems, Letters to a Night Traveler.