click for credit
the furnace is out,
after weeks creak-and-moaning,
telling in gusts of fire-scented air,
the stories of this house.
in the week before his replacement arrives,
we pull blankets from their chest.
they smell of winters past and layer the years,
one after another, thennowandtocome,
on my shivering lap.
i want to stay buried, to remember the weight,
to save up the chill in some cold sacred place,
and redeem it mid-summer,
when the heat forces forgetting,
and i start to believe i’ll never know winter again.
