Melissa Crowe

You ask me to accept this winterlessness,
and I do. I bare shy knees and drink sweet tea
in January, July, abide your fist-fat magnolia petals

rotting the lawn, your blistering brick walks
where sleepy lizards pink, and in the cracks
perhaps the widow spider, brown recluse.

I won't miss the terror of driving back roads,
black ice and deer eyes till the house appears,
solid and with its pocket of secret heat.

Yes, I relinquish the danger of December
and its deliciousness, short precious days,
mornings spent sitting by the eastern-facing

window, eyes trained on the light. It's alright.
But know where I go I carry this cheek-chapped
northern girl. Wool-wrapped, she trudges

her mother's boot prints from front door
to bus stop in pre-dawn's impossible blue.
Or now, unbundled, follows you.