poem

by Melissa Shepherd

Girl in Winter 

Remember when I couldn’t go a day

without crying? my daughter asks,

cracking snow along the lake,

the shuttered campground

we pretend to guard,

skirt the barriers and walk,

no cars allowed this time of year,

no other visitors.

The stillness settles in me

but leaps from her like a flame.

She warms her hands on it

and plucks the most exquisite icicles,

the hardest to reach.

I lick mine to a splinter

and lay it on my tongue—

she cried last night,

her back in knots after a fall

from a slope not much bigger

than the one in front of her.

She cross-steps down

to a willow tree chandeliered

over the shore.

Don’t press your luck, I warn,

the ice is fresh. She nods. She knows

I don’t believe in testing nature

the way she does.

Her fingers shear a low candle,

a compromise

blued with sun. Another question:

Do you really think I was a bird

in a past life? Of course, I say.

That’s why I named you after one.

Phoe-be, phoe-be, she calls

into the smoke-cold sky.

Which bird were you?

Oh love, I never was.

Not even once?

Not even once.

---

Melissa Shepherd is a writer, editor, and arts advocate who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bicoastal Review, BRAWL Lit, Good River Review, Jarnal, Tar River Poetry, Twin Bird Review, The Dread Literary Review, The Spotlong Review, and Thimble Literary Magazine. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Naslund-Mann School of Writing at Spalding University and recently completed her first full collection of poems, Keys to the Emptying House. www.melissashepherd.info