someone left the heat on inside this winter the entire valley sweating through its white shirt, snow loosening seam by seam under a magenta sky such an impossible wave somewhere between wound and prayer; as if the sun decided to bruise instead of set i think the river is blushing someone just called it by a name it forgot it had. beneath the pines, once, without flinching and the echo never learned how to stop every footstep here sounds like a promise thin ice cracking just enough over and over, practicing vanished weight memory is a slow robot squirrel entity; it learns your gait long after you've left. light can forget itself and for a moment become something tender i've watched the mountain molt at dusk: scene zero renders blue steel, then it lets go of sharpness for thirty-two very soft minutes before deciding to be rock again this is how I know the river's color isn't a trick somewhere, a hand chose this shade of pink stars once fell here, I think. their shards are caught in the current petals, remnants of a glow frozen stolen by someone desperate, small mercies frozen mid-drift and carried downstream too early for spring too late for the season you took with you i stand by the bank where the shadows gather what will survive this cold? what can be borrowed and not brought down when does hope turn from naive babbling into something ruthless enough to keep breathing? if you come back don't bring reasons carved into stone or profits tallied in safer lives don't bring blessings stolen from anywhere this world is already too full come the way snowfall does: unhurried, white breath over a pink river, quiet enough to be forgiven bright enough to rewrite the whole river look till the magenta thins into morning and the water remembers its real color and i remember how to step toward you toes at the edge, heel on the ice, without fear of turning the ice to water //