Hibernation

I am the tree laid bare by winter,

all sandpaper bark and the hollowness of a thing almost-dead,

holding my breath in the fractured light of the perpetual confessional,

waiting for an uncertain absolution.

Wind blows, and the naked branches whisper anyway,

exchanging truth-limned secrets that bite the way a wolf does and swell with yearning in the dark, dark, dark,

for it is always dark in winter, dark now or dark soon, it is dark all the same,

and you may be able to melt away into the icy shadows of the stars, but you cannot hide, not even when you have become Nothing.

I am a hollow, aching, futile thing -

too much wind and I will be felled, too little and I might not exist,

and if I fall in the forest and no one is there to help me up, will my tears make a sound?

I’m not sure it matters,

for night is eternal the way that winter is,

and no one wants to hear it when a militant amnesia steals all recollection of dawn and spring,

but bones remember.

Bones creak and hurt and remember,

and so do roots, curling so carefully and silently and deep into the earth,

where it is always dark, dark, dark, but dark like

your face pressed into Dad’s shoulder when you were small and he was infinite and there was nothing he couldn’t fix,

dark like the blankets pulled over your head to keep the monsters at bay,

dark like a blindfold and the word “surprise!”

Some days, in my midwinter soul, all I can do is curl

my toes,

my bones,

my roots,

deep into the merciful earth, and trust they will be my memory when I can hold nothing else.