THREE WINTERS
First winter suddenly comes I am looking for you
but you are in Minnesota. Nothing much
in the kitchen so you roast an acorn squash
with butter and honey he boils frozen green beans.
You eat it all on the couch he tells you eat the skin.
You are not sure you like the way that makes you feel.
He says we can’t waste a single thing.
Three days and zero things wasted. You don’t feel the need
to impress him or you do but in a sweet way. Like eating the skin.
Like dancing. Like you are just always sort of nervous.
You search for weight in everything suddenly comes goodbye.
You ate an entire bag of potato chips. Leftover squash you make into soup.
Second winter you have been in love with just about everything.
You always know you have fallen in love
when you eat a squash together then never again.
This has happened something like a thousand times.
A feeling like madly and always forgetting.
It is all about a flood and maybe about being a cancer.
Your body is only the outline of your body
something or another makes you forget.
You are looking but everyone is not in Minnesota.
You want to remember but you don’t sleep through the night.
Instead you don’t ask is this better than being alone.
In the third winter you search for the weight remember the flood.
The worst water. This is some other kind of miracle.
Third winter that water freezes.
You are in Iowa you see each old love in the same week.
Somehow they ask you have you ever been here before.
You want to but you don’t say this is mine this is mine this is mine.
You want to but you don’t say yes.
Instead you ask don’t come over its late.
You search for weight in everything but yourself
find out everyone is going to the same frozen water
to swim with everyone else you know.
A miracle is remembering on nights you need to remember.
You don’t ask do you know what that feels like because you don’t have to ask.
Third winter you want to know god again.
Third winter you want to know god again suddenly comes a fall between lamp light.
A fall in Minnesota morning. Suddenly comes kissing
in bed for a bunch of months straight until you remember to fall asleep
until you know you have already fallen that you have been falling that
this is the miracle. Nothing is the same as what it was before.
Even what feels like two minutes you remember it all.
Sometimes you pretend to forget.
Sometimes you pretend you have never eaten a squash.
You walk alone you walk alone in a prairie in Iowa you kick it out of the way
you make your own soup. Nothing is the same as what it was before
you look at the skin you look at the sugar fingers you fall each night.
Sweetness and vinegar this is the miracle.
That you know you have already fallen that you have been falling.
Something about a flood. Something about there are a lot
of different kinds of people in the world and you are nothing but a cancer.
One more time. One more time you remember everything. Search
for the weight and fall in the winter. Fall in the coldest winter.
Fall into everything good.