These Hazy Days

Snowfall

I am lost in the snow.
My body carries me,
but I don't want it to.
I want to fall into white--
into warmth.

Her eyes were soft brown.
My cat had gray stripes
and one whisker longer than the rest.
On my fourth birthday, my mother
gave me a toy train.
I brought it to the beach
with me that June,
and I lost it.
We looked for a half hour
before we drove back home.
My father shaved my head
when I had lice
and used to sing me lullabies.
Four falls ago, we learned
Grandma was gone.
My brother hugged me tightly.
I had never seen him cry like that.

My brother loved the snow.
It made him write poems and
compose impressionist piano pieces.
The snow makes me feel
like I'm on the brink of death,
he said.
Like the world is on the brink
of death--
but gentle death.
Release, he said.
Then he went underwater.

I remember April, years ago.
We walked together through a night
that smelled of summer.
The rhododendrons' lips were parting.
Shadows of stray dogs
came and went
under the streetlamps.
He talked to me about
his sweet girlfriend
and the wonders of space.
He cried often back then,
after Grandma disappeared,
and he would hold my hands,
and run, and sing.

I loved him.
I hope he could see that.
Now I can't see much of anything
but this blinding, binding
snowfall.