Suddenly Spring

Alma Ariez, Canada

I wasn’t trying to lose her

when I first walked backward

through my footprints in the snow.

My feet just pressed themselves that way,

safer secluded within their imprint

and the absence of who I was.

The bigger the lump that is caught in your throat

(severing the cords you’d use to cry out),

The less you can cure it with a name.

The harsher the cold, the lesser the sting,

As numbness travels down your skin

and fools your body into warmth,

Your shoulders hike

above themselves until that

shape is all you know, and you wake up

twenty with the body

of eighty, nothing to show

and nowhere to go, but places to be

and a trail going cold.

I stared at the nape of her neck in

the mirror, and wondered how it can be

that a cold enough sting

starts to subside, turns blue and then black,

Until you remember, if it isn’t too late, who it was

that held your hand

in that vat of tepid water,

And who controls the thermostat.

I wasn’t trying to find her

when my frontal lobe whispered

that I should blindly retrace my steps.

Blindly is better

than never at all; it’s all

that we have when the damage succumbs.

A room of reflection, the person you are,

The pain in your back and a

cold slowly thawing.

Alma Ariaz is a student in Humber Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing Program. She is a social media manager and editor for Arrival Magazine, Humber Polytechnic’s student-led literary magazine. Her short stories and poetry have been published in literary journals online including Writers Resist, 50-Word Stories, and the Amazine.