Winter froze violins under the lake in sixteenth notes; sheet music mocking ancient heroes too tired to navigate Thursday.
Proclamations became frozen birds in a reel of forgetting that the moon mourned lost footprints.
The children hoarded magic under porch light.
Shed behind the thickest trees, our words tired of us; our coats lined with notebooks no one knew how to read, armor for someone else’s heartbreak.
I was hungry for a kind betrayal of darkness, that someone would scurry the trail towards an opening in paragraphs.
When the queen abdicated in the fairy tale, she left a note about silence.
They say electrical currents won’t ameliorate the abstract plummet; that the king still wanted an explanation for a running out of town.
We were good until we couldn’t be good anymore; mismatched arias about subletting suffering.
No one knew how to take it really; the quiet of profound slogans on fences.
When the angels in the script were no longer enamored of us, we sent fan mail to glaciers set into free-fall; the penguins discussing hierarchy.
I became my mother without a cane; a day with rumors of departure under lightbulbs that didn’t work anymore, a Christmas tree of miniature errant postcards.
We might celebrate something akin to composure at the letting out of animal noises when the bullet hits its mark and breath dismantles the sky’s promises.
We were ice fisherwomen who cut out the violins and cut our hands on strings.
There must be an explanation for some of this.