The Angel Who Writes in Snow
At the edge of the world
an angel bends down,
writing names in the snow.
Each letter is an unspoken breath,
each comma,
a grave where unshed eyes sleep.
The lamppost burns crooked,
the pigeons’ shadows spin over tram wires,
and only the ice-pencil presses
against my skull
empty of memory.
Under my eyelids, ash gathers.
When I blink,
the world’s windows open,
and light enters like a pilgrim,
tearing its stone robe,
becoming, for a moment,
my trembling body.
Elsewhere in the poem, a door slams.
A woman carries bread in a thin bag.
The clock in the square
ticks like a saint
biting glass.
I carry my heart like a candle
through a roofless monastery.
Its flame bends to every prayer wind.
Beneath my steps, psalms of ice,
and I tread carefully,
as if beneath each verse, children sleep.
No one sees.
Outside, I walk in silence,
greet passersby,
but inside,
the angel shakes its wings,
and the feathers drift through my mind
like handkerchiefs forgotten at a window in a nursing home.
A cat watches from the end of the street.
A train breaks under the bridge.
Words fall from my mouth
like paint peeling from old icons.
And yet,
on the night when language shatters,
the angel leans beside me and whispers:
“You are alive because you are silent.
You are alive because you carry the light
like a beautiful wound.”
Then the snow begins to sing
under my steps.
The road stretches,
a white sentence,
written for the one
who will never arrive.
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