February 2022

February 2022

I am here and I am old and I am ageless. She thinks because I don’t have eyes, my eyes aren’t open. But I watch from the front porch, where the trees have knots and the knots look out and mountains hold onto their bones, until they are trees again, shading a mountain from the sun. This is a pale idea of February, but it is the only month the calendar on the wall makes sense. The girl refuses to change it. Half stubbornness, half fear.

There is cinnamon on the doorsteps. Dishes in the sink. And the girl? She is a poet again. She tries on the costume every now and again, though I’d never betray her with an honest reflection in my mirrors. She is a poet right now, writing and not writing, wearing blowsy white shirts and biting the ends of her pens. She is a poet right now, but in her stories she is a philosopher, and I won’t embarrass her by telling the truth.

She apologized so nicely for the brain freeze. As a kindness, she brings me rose petals one by one that she steals from old weddings by the river. She keeps them in a jar on my shelf in the kitchen.

But if I could want for anything, it might be a little more moss inside. I didn’t mind the cold. I was shady and cool as a cave, I could have held a bear through the rest of winter or maybe a bat. It is nice being beautiful, but nice is not more valuable to me than a soft black thing wrapped up in itself and hanging from the rafters. Until I want something else, I will whisper to the barn. The barn has a bat. We share the joy of having something living inside us and watch through the trees for what is coming on the warmer wind.

Cold and kindly,

the apple house cave