We Left Your Wheelchair in the Snow
From a recent venture into Texas snow
We leave your wheelchair behind to be buried in fresh, powdery snow so your numb feet can feel the frosted ground/I am too embarrassed to tell you that your paralyzed mass is too heavy for me to be lugging around in negative four degrees/You stop me by patting on my neck/We look down to see white between your toes./ /You stop shivering and look straight up/I am still staring at your toes, waiting for them to wiggle—waiting for the big toe to organize a revolution and jump from the snow into my warm breast pocket/They don’t wiggle, I can’t move anymore, now, I’m starting to imagine what face you’re making, I hope it’s not the it’s okay, you tried your best face—the one with the slight smirk and placating eyes/ My throat tightens because my chest is too still--
bitter needles hold my cheek.
you managed to push me in the snow while I was waiting for your toes to move.
I hear your throat-ripping cackle/ I am awake again.
I learn that you cannot numb numbness.
About the Creator
Mark Perkins
Mark Perkins is a college sophomore, at Stephen F. Austin State University, studying Creative Writing and English. His goals are to become an author and teach.
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Strays on Fourth Street
I. To call this place nothing would be an insult to emptiness: tattered streets, faded houses held together by spider webs, and air that was always grey. “Fourth Street” had been untouched by the postwar booms and was bedrock in the economic chain. That fact radiated throughout the street emitting permanent misery. Except, not everyone on the block was miserable. In fact, there was one little girl—who “was growing up too fast”—that became one of the few things worth fighting for on Fourth Street: Ally Rumm.
By Mark Perkins5 years ago in Families
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