Do you hear what I hear? A voice, singing in the woods behind the cemetery. The words faint and distant on the wind like the smell of pine, the taste of cloves. It's so icy out. My teeth chatter, skin flushes, fingers in my mittens feel numb. I'm digging in the snow, looking for the song beneath the evergreen boughs.
Do you feel what I feel? A tombstone on a hill, chiselled rock, garnered in frost and snow, the script hard to see, easier felt, even with numb fingers.
In bed later, my heart settled for another year to loss. Every holiday it's harder being without you, but at least you sing sometimes, on the tapes I made, dancing on video in the snow, with your hood up and the scarf wrapped around your face. Oh what fun it was to play in the snow that fell that day.
On our backs making angels, the drifting flakes like icing on our fronts. Rolling together, the silky rasp of jacket on jacket. You pull off your mittens and put your hands inside mine. Finger to finger, palm to palm, I have to nuzzle your snowy scarf away to kiss you.
Smell the wet wool, the clean sharp snow, taste of vanilla chapstick because in the winter it's so dry. You roll over to your back, pulling me above you, I make a bridge above your body.
In the winter we dress in so many layers. I pull my hands from your mittens and touch the snow around us, cooling my fingers and then slipping my hands beneath your jacket and sweater, along your waist. You laugh and squirm away, but I've got you. I let my hands warm against your skin.
"Let's go in," you say, but I resist.
I make a bed for you of snow, two troughs for your legs and two for your arms. Then, more snow over top. I pack it down, sculpting you. It's not so cold. I make sure your head is uncovered.
I slip the elastic waist of your ski pants down so that a bare inch of jeans is exposed. Then further, I slip my mittens beneath your waist, so you're not directly on the snow. Down further, until they've bunched around your knees. You've moved and ruined my quilt of snow over top of you.
