letter from anchorage
last night a moose came over. sauntered right up to the basement window to eat our landlords’ plants. we saw her hanging around hours earlier, sitting in six inches of soft snow next to the sidewalk, back legs tucked beneath her, head held upright, little baby ears and giant humps of shoulder blades pointing at the sky. when we heard her stir we did the same, crept quietly towards the window, opened the curtain, stood very still. t holding my shoulders, awe holding us captive as this animal, bigger than both our bodies put together, bigger than the subaru hatchback in the driveway, bigger than the square footage of our bathroom and our kitchen combined, came closer and closer, filling her mouth bigger than my head with branches and needles off the shrubs that lined the house. behind her bent-down crown the near-full moon lit up the background, shining on snow-covered treetops, snow-covered bike racks, snow-covered trash cans. nevermind that we live in the city. nevermind that we rent a one-room garage apartment off a main highway, down the block from a combination gas station/liquor store/pizza hut. nevermind that this night we weren’t even in our garage apartment but fifty feet east in our landlords' basement bigger than our apartment which they let us move into until our frozen pipes unfreeze. and if it wasn’t for those frozen pipes we probably would’ve only seen the moose above ground across the driveway, instead of bowing her head down to our level, leaning in to the basement window for a kiss. nevermind that we didn’t deserve it. i just wanted to tell you that it happened. nevermind how the white snow, so fresh and so shiny, got caked into the fur on her snout. nevermind how her brown eyes through the dirty window were like dark rum in a dive bar shot glass. nevermind how i got wasted on them. nevermind all the metaphors about the moon, its ethereal and obvious magic, how under its light the moose seemed that much more mythical, how the impossible radiance of winter refracted through that basement window and became a mirrorball, flashing our dingy frozen life at us in fragments, turning a mundane monday evening in january in a basement down the block from a gas station/liquor store/pizza hut into something suddenly spectacular, something so much more majestic than we ever thought we could have. i know, everyone knows that snow is white and a moose’s eyes are brown and the moon is magic. i just wanted to tell you that it happened. and how could anyone ever deserve it? nevermind.
Sara Iacovelli is a poet and a preschool teacher. She has gone to grad school too many times, though never for writing; she holds degrees in comparative literature and special education. She lives in the northern Catskills with her partner, a very large dog, and a very soft cat. Her work has appeared in Barren Magazine, Sidereel Magazine, Monkeybicycle, and Eunoia Review.