WHITE
Duplicitous white snow turns crimson beneath me.
A bloody outline seeping its way around my stricken frame.
Marking the dying body of the person I used to be.
An avalanche of activity in the time it takes a winter’s
breath to form and disappear.
Through cries that climb
between barren brown branches
a single question thaws in my sixteen-year-old mind.
What happens next?
I rouse to the sound of sirens.
It is the last day of the Tour de France
and the gendarmerie are clearing the Champs-Élysées.
We are in Paris on our honeymoon.
You’re facing me, and, for the second time in two days,
dressed in white again, only now wrapped in hotel sheets.
Confetti still in your hair, champagne still on your lips.
The corners of my mouth stretch for the grey at my temples.
Drunk on euphoria, I answer a twenty-year-old question.
We happen next.