If You Were Here

"God, is she so lazy now that she can't even be bothered to crop these before posting them?" Yes, yes she is.

I would make peppermint cocoa for two

on the stovetop

and we would sit side by side on my red loveseat,

our backs leaning against the arms and our feet

meeting somewhere in between.

Either your presence would perk me up,

or I would hang a cheered expression on my face

like the fresh hand towel in the bathroom.

If I could coax you into it, you would tell me about

what winter was like when you were in third grade.

I've been thinking about third grade a lot lately.

You might pause at the sight of new flakes floating

outside the window and we would both say,

This January has been so strange.

Banks of snow lining the street for a whole month now

when most winters it scarcely lingers long enough to run

the sled up the hill to the park.

I might confess that I'm working too much

for a season I had allocated for rest,

and you would believe me when I say that

I don't know what else to do

but keep making things.

I don't know any other way out of my bed,

which threatens to close me into its cozy comforter cave

until April.

And let's face it:

my optimism won't last that long untended.

I pray for other kinds of rest now--

that like all these falling flakes

each cup of cocoa and quiet conversation

and every long gaze out the window

will accumulate into something that will last.

That they will line my long, thin, upward-reaching places

and pile into a covering that sends the deep places

even deeper.