Girl in the Snow
– Begun with a line from Anna Akhmatova
Nothing is changed: against the dining-room windows, the snow is pressed in a kind of reticence that gives everyone inside permission to put off any plans of adventure or of tinkering with an abandoned invention. Now a book in the corner cracks open like a rusty safe, now the flakes of dust on the photo album dance in the air. Memory spins. The silver pot is set to boil; its hiss nudges someone to tell a story.
When the sun breaks through the frost of the windows, your words will begin to rattle inside the unhinged cage of your body. But a bit of the soul or primal spirit or a ghost inside you will linger, refuse to be gathered like this torn bit of wool from a red scarf winding in lazy slurs across the hardwood floor.
Let the snow flurry, what is unvoiced and nearly forgotten has waited too long. One of your distant relatives, so distant you’re not even aware of her, waits at the end of the driveway. She can only speak, only be heard if you go into silence, if you gently look out the window for the possibility of her. She has a bright red scarf on that matches the torn piece of wool now crackling in the flames within the stove. Her words will change everything.
Lisa Alexander Baron is the author of four collections of poetry including While She Poses, poems prompted by visual art. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches advocacy in writing and speech at Philadelphia-area colleges. Another of her gigs is a circulation assistant at a public library.
See more of her work in 12.3