“Spring Melt” by Katherine Bode-Lang

Katherine Bode-Lang

SPRING MELT

They separate in March:
the first of our friends

to decide on divorce.
We tiptoe around the month;

we’ve been fighting,
too. Our house is an

over-starched shirt.
The month is dark with rain,

the streets all slick
like sadness. We wait,

rarely patient, for a thaw,
for our hands to unknot

into hands again. But
our friends are an ice floe

breaking apart in spring’s
thick current. We pull

the muck of winter
from the gutters, hope

the water runs clean again;
nothing more than this:

we hold onto each other
like upturned boats—

even if cold can never
really go away, even if

we might always feel the frost
at the edges of our bodies.

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

__________

Katherine Bode-Lang: “I’m a recent MFA graduate from Penn State, and live in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, with my husband, Andrew, and our cat, Grace. When I’m not teaching or writing, I’m a volunteer book mender at the county library.”

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