The Gravity of Joy

We bought the sled in August after seeing the hills we live
near even though the chance of snow was months out.
Tonight, we didn’t bring it with us bundled and cantering
through the first few inches. Our feet inventing
patterns to carve that surely you’ve invented too.
Rows of foot-tall smiley faces and, in front of a
stranger’s house, a “yo!” with an “o” so wide it looks
like a cheek pulled out and stretched taut.

And I start to let go of our fight from this afternoon,
the particulars fall away and are slowly, quietly
buried. Something like a hush. You can watch it
fall, flake by flake and surely they are so small
and so delicate, they could never cover
my raised voice. But they do. You can see the shape
it makes under the snow.

Then a brass band. We hear it walking home. I
shit you not we hear something like a brass band
and I think someone is putting their lips to metal.
It is 27 degrees. Sometimes you do get pulled
nose-first or ear-first towards something you can’t
see. We’re not the only ones. Pairs of us drawn
to the park, trusting melody. You can see
the gravity of joy tonight, the way it weighs
down unseen dimensions and we, our
feet following behind, fall towards. We get denser
closer to the sound. Even so late, hours past
when any of us would go here any other night.

It’s not a brass band but it is a trumpet and a
backing track, standing in black on the hill
with a dog with a light-up collar running in circles,
with sledders hiking up to the right to go again,
and snowboarders, bless them, squeaking in
360s off hand-piled ramps on hundred meter hills.
A teenage boy lounges – really, he lounges – in
head-to-toe denim in the snow, taking video
of the trumpeter and leaning back on an elbow
like the swell of earth is a swell of sand and wave.

I want to dance with you but the dance song is over
and I am trying not to be sad about it. Hold you instead,
your back against my front and both of us taking in
what feels like a small miracle. It is close to midnight
but the light off the snow takes us out of time
so we go home to get the sled. You say the music
will be gone when we get back and I am trying
not to be sad about that now. It’s not the first time.

The trumpet is gone when we get back with the sled
but the park is not quiet, at least not silent.
Impossibly small children scream something like words
at the bottom of the hill before running back up.
The snowboarders, bless them again, thunk gently
sliding down the rail they’ve made by lining up four
of the park’s picnic benches. I want to play jazz
off my phone but know it’s not the same.

We bring our sled to the top of the hill and tuck
our two adult bodies into it. This ends up being
the only way it works. The plastic is too thin
for less than three hundred pounds of downward pressure.
Less and it warps and turns around. My shirts soaked from
the snow that shoveled up my coat on those first runs alone.
We bought a shitty sled. But we ride it almost two hours,
and when we take breaks, we put chocolate from our pockets
into our mouths and think about kissing. Sometimes I put it right
onto your tongue. You stop to rest and I look up into

the snow stinging tornados in the light from the park’s
vintage street lamps. This isn’t a snow, it’s a winter storm,
and my face and hands want to crack from it. They might
by tomorrow. But the snow blows sideways in front of
old buildings and new buildings that border the park, it
blows against the trees where I hope the squirrels are
tucked away so deeply, it blows against my body which
is so sick this winter. But is so protected right now that

the chill doesn’t even come in at the cuffs. And maybe
the news I got on Wednesday will be okay. And maybe
you will be okay, and I will be okay, and maybe you
and I will be okay. And maybe here is a good place
to be. I don’t know what comes after the snow melts
but it might be okay just to watch it swirl in light
from old, old lamps, to take a couple runs down the hill
on my own again, and when this shitty green sled warps,
catches, faces me wrong, to throw my weight out of it
and bail, arms pinwheeling, body rolling, and laughing
like I haven’t in weeks.