on the bright white occasion of a second coming; or, in anticipation of spring
by Courtney Brown
mouth like milk tea, but I wasn’t dressed for the blizzard
jawbone sharp enough to cut down my body light as a raven’s feather, swept up
a thousand men, in the glittering dark of that frostbitten night,
breath so cold the wind wrapped around me
he could have had snowbanks like a barbed-wire blanket,
for gums, piercing the tough flesh at my belly
icicle-straight canines, and my throat, stained red with the thin juice
snowflake-soft tongue of pomegranate seeds
he was the wintertime it felt like floating, or like molting,
and I, discontented like crawling out of the hole
as a snake left out in the frigid open I was meant to die in after
snow-blind and willing, three days’ rest and disillusionment
walked straight into the center like coaxing the entire storm into the cave
of his blizzard-strong love so that it could die there instead