In your next life you will be / birthed in needles / of hoarfrost, your eyes still / in the blue gauze between

You can die in January if you want, / and lots of people do, but this far north, / nobody gets into the ground till spring.

You’ve seen them in the deep sleep / of the season: figures sitting in a garden, / light on their faces as you enter.

I never dreamt of you but of your parts: / my flatland home, the mountains my mother loved, / beach where I could look out and see only not-you.

From Hamra to Bliss St, we’ll list the loves we’ve thrown in the sea.

The sky shakes us / like a shoe with a stone inside. / Even the smallest stone hurts.

If I could have a daughter, / it would be my life goal to make sure she never—not in a million years ever— / confused one kind of touch for another.

Let’s make a wedding photo, you and I. / I’m blind and you weren’t there, but between us / we can do this.

In the North Country, there are blues so perfect / you want to tear your heart out to be alive / and sober.

On the playground I strum guitar while my daughter dangles upside down from the bar above the tall slide, and inside my middle-aged brain a movie plays.