Jeanmarie Marchese Poet Prose Poetry

Stitches of January.

“Buy me a scarf” she said and curled her toes through snow to demonstrate the color of
numbness..

“Buy me a scarf and I'll wrap our memories around my neck, you can watch me smile in
storms as I contemplate warmth and look at you beneath the sky.”


I wrote promises on windows with fingers that touched shadows and counted snowflakes
crystals as I destroyed their patterns in a feeble attempt to claim love...

There, in the house that spoke one thousand tears, I thought about the secrets we
whispered when the year turned and purple was fantastic on the other side of frozen lakes
despite the voices that named us something unspeakable.

Rings and silver and I wore one on my toe, polished perfectly, my feet felt summer and I
laughed in lilts of June and breaths of lilac bushes that lined my backyard, but I kept my
closet door shut, winter stitches on shelves so January's voice would never be heard...

I boxed up photographs and letters that quoted songs we had sang together, I covered up
her haircut and placed her eyeliner in an envelope but I knew, beneath the ground where
lilac bushes rooted themselves...

she wore the ring I had placed upon her finger on her fourteenth birthday, on the day
August spoke up and we listened intently, mocking 

January

and bedposts that wrote her name...


and I sat, cleaning prints off of windows, erasing promises and eluding love, wondering,
if I had learned how to knit, would sidewalks have been so convincing?


I listened to memories and bought myself a scarf, wrapped stitches of January around my
neck and heard her, in laughter, as she whispered through the wind that numbed the fingers
that broke promises...

“Lend me your scarf, and I'll see you, I'll hold your hand when August knocks you down.”

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