When my Mama Lay in the Snow

there is a story my mama used to tell me when she lay in two feet of snow in the middle of
a field somewhere off Rt 9.

she lay in the dark and watched the stars so long she couldn’t feel her body, the snow around her
clean and wide. she stayed until she couldn’t hear her breath or her heartbeat. it was so quiet, she
could hear snowflakes lie down next to her, and when a tractor found her there, she left, covered
in soft white dust.

sometimes, i lie in bed and try to feel nothing except the mattress. if i stare at the ceiling long
enough and hard enough, i can pretend the crack of white i see there is in my ears and my spine. i
let pillows slip into my arms, blankets settle inside the backs of my knees. i let my knee caps
soften into feathers.

my mama taught me how to stand when your feet tell you there is no ground. she taught me how
to walk when the ground shifts under you and your ears tell you up is sideways. my mama taught
me that tipping my head back in the shower is a privilege.

now, the edge of the collar of my coat is damp with warm breath. there is a lacey piece of eye-blue sky framed by the broken edges of leaves. in it, a growing mass of birds contracts and
expands.