Seeing Light

The night before her house fills up again, she stands at the picture window, looks at the cover of snow. No moon. The streetlight fills up a space on the street like a small window, extends to her yard, and thousands of snow flakes light up the suburban night, like small stars that have fallen onto her lawn. There's no moon. There's nothing but emptiness.

It's true that she has no idea what she wants right now, but she loves the gentle quiet of her home. A cat slips through the hole in the door, going to the basement. From one street over, she can hear the tread of a car on the snow. Once she travelled over continents, moved to new countries, alone. Her heart would rush with excitement. She would sit down with strangers, kick up conversations. Lifted pints to her lips all on her own. Now her victory is this first weekend alone: seeing stars in the snow.

Tonight she picks up a different book and reads "What did I know, what did I know/ of love's austere and lonely offices?" She puts the poem down and listens to push of heat from the vents. She decides she will be okay, for now, but knows that she will wake up at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 (now, now) and will change her mind all night long. In the morning she will change the sheets on her child's bed, try to imagine what holding him again will feel like. She wants him to come to her with wild abandon and dreads the way he will call, like a sheep, for his other mother. It doesn't matter. She will always hold him tight, knowing as she does now, about these lonely and austere offices.

The stars in the snow. The stars in the snow.