Weeks of snow. The plants freeze, green leaves
darken to raisin, curl at the edges as if scorched.
The ink in my pen thickens, won’t write.
At night we lie under a snowdrift
of duvets, not moving, conserving
the flickering flame of heat in our bodies-
one wrong move and it’s bare skin
on a patch of ice. The fire in my brain all night,
the conflagration. Five blocks away
a homeless woman burns in her cart,
the stingy heat of a candle lighting up
her quilts and cardboard, her long red hair.
The crack and splinter of ice,
a canopy of powder slipping to the sidewalk-
you love how it muffles everything,
stifles the sounds of the city, the gunshots
going off downtown, the screams.
The metal grid burning. Fluff in the air.
The eiderdown sky. Bundled strangers passing,
eyes down, Styrofoam cups steaming
in their hands. Pyramid of coats and hats
and gloves and scarves; goose feathers in my nose.
Tomorrow the bridge will be coated in ice
the colour of concrete-
we will slip and slide across, cautious
as the elderly, oyster-grey ocean sluggish below.
A swipe of charcoal on a cement wall
the only record of the woman’s passing,
the ghost shape of her life as it went up in flames.