The Girl

Faintest rose upon her cheeks
falls, tosses,
breaches every sliver and crack,
every silvered door;
nothing holds her quite like
the cold drag of January,
blunted, stayed too long.
And where at first Autumn colors
puddled on the streets,
they've soaked into ground iced
hard
–hard as the treks of pioneers
and pilgrims; hard as
leaving your child dead behind you on
the trail. As much as you
wade forward into water-ice-snow-despair,
you haven't yet left that first moment;
it's bitterness burns
in your blood, its bitterness keeps biting;
sharp as the mortal wound
inflicted by dark wolves' slick
canines
on your open throat–
she gasps and gurgles through
the soft, bleak sky.