Yearly Mendings
My windowpane whispers the outer world’s language.
Wisps of wind howl through barren trees, whistling against my chamber’s cold edges—a delicate soundtrack to the restitching of my being that a frosty winter night permits.
Spring fostered overgrowth.
Summer hacked through it with a hatchet, leaving Fall to tend the wounds— to decay and decay and decay.
I plunge my mutilated hands into icy tap water, each sting and tingle alive with vivid memory.
My candle’s flame dances with my measured inhales and exhales,
its crackle harmonizing with the wind’s low howl.
I hunch over the incandescence- the only warm-toned brushstroke in my deep blue cave.
It’s enough light to see where the year has sliced my appendages and what is worth tending.
I stitch my splitting fingers one by one.
The faces I once touched with diamond edges flicker in the candlelight as thread pulls through skin.
The thorns I wove myself into for the glimmering berry at the vine’s end wrap my wrists in phantom pain as I change my bandages.
Each winter I arrive at the same wisdom.
Do not take off your leather gloves at the first sight of longer days.
But how sweet it feels to touch even if it draws blood.
I set the needle down and flex my hands before me, as if admiring a fresh manicure
not healed but cared for from another year of living.
I blow out the fire out with a huff and crawl into my now completely cobalt nook.
Closing my eyes not to awake until the dark loosens its grip
Until frost unlatches the windowpane and the winds shake and rattle through lush leaves
and light relearns my name.
I sleep with mended hands on my chest,
palms still tender,
dreaming of sap rising,
of gloves folded neatly by the door,
waiting to be ran past again and again.
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