8 Things to Say to a Blizzard.

1

Fortune favors the bold

but it’s hard not to shiver

when you’re so icy.

2

As a kid in the south,

it’s always been more likely to rain

than to snow.

The 1001 variables must weave into one another

like dancers looking for partners

or future lovers catching each other at perfect moment

for the air to crystallize between their gazes

and cool off the heat that separates love from lust,

dissolving like dust from diamonds –

the dashing we do changes everything.

3

The weather outside is frightful,

and the rest, as they say, is history.

And there’s a lot of that

in the wreath on my door

the photos on my shelves

and the person I used to share both with.

The storm isn’t so scary

from in front of the fire –

I admit: though I no longer hang your stocking,

and through sips of my grandmother’s recipe eggnog

I often forget you, there are still nights

where I wish you’d fall into my arms

like a 73” dream-catcher and lay your head down.

4

Tell me say me cher

my belle

I’ll be gone till November. . .

Leaving in some places and just arriving others,

your very essence is a matter of perspective

and they call your beauty debatable.

You remind me of a dawn or dusk

in the arctic circle: all good things

begin and end sooner or later

and most of all it depends

on where you’re watching the sun go down.

5

I hold a north star in my bloodline.

I always wander, never get lost

and never snowblind

but I keep finding myself back where I began.

Maybe I’m a supernova

distant from society, waiting to collapse

wondering why it hasn’t happened yet.

All the gravity of the city

trying to bring us together

only serves to break us apart.

This is what dead things do.

6

If I ever meet an ice road trucker

or talk to my dad again

I’ll let them know

it’s nothing personal.

7

If this is what the end of the world feels like,

I welcome it. With the cackling crackle of embers

on Christmas Eve

and the wind whipping the world,

causing the trees to bend and kiss one another

under the mistletoe they’ve grown in the 100 years

they have been planted here shows me:

now is the gift we call the present.

8

If I could have one wish for the world

for my loved ones and for myself,

they’d all be the same:

that we learn we are all more similar

than we are separate.

Every single flake is unique

yet they manage to stick together

love the simple things like snow days

and hot cocoa,

sledding

and silence.

And since all that’s left of the storm is silence

let me say:

We are so different.

So different,

yet exactly the same.