The first winter you lived north
threshing snow from the corn
stubble all around our rented farm.
We did our business in fat old
coats.
snowplows spraying us with
scrapings,
our noses frozen white.
We tucked in preowned cars with
threadbare rugs,
and the house shook around us
coughing, coughing the air so cold everything
snapped.
Only by chance did things improve
when we moved the beds and babies
to new places
just far enough apart we could not
hear each other cough.
And now my old head out the window
of my solid, insulated home
or my clean, reliable car
both nearly paid for and funds left
over in an IRA,
I hire a man to thin the windbreak,
it is so warm this side.
I pass the place you emptied—
next year’s wood stacked neatly in
the yard
garden stones all nudging through
the snow
wooden swing at the edge of the trees—
and finally understand: you'd had
enough.
You spent the heat you had while
here on us
and needed it back (or save what’s
left).
(Note to self re next winter:
replace car battery, restock cough syrup,
get flannel sheets,
inhale much colder air.)
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