in winter, everything sleeps

Tap. Tap. Tap. My foot. The water. There are expectations.
I cannot move from the couch. The window creaks in the winter ice.

There is movement where I am not moving.
Wake up wake up wake up. A river caked in its own weight.

Heat through the gas makes the metal expand. It pops.
I close my eyes tighter and hug my arms around my breasts.

By now the trees are asleep, life support limited to slow supply.
If I breathe slowly, I can feel all three feet of snow on my chest.

There are grey streaks in the black and the white on the ground looks less.
I turn on every light I pass by on the way to the bedroom.  

human geography

Tectonic plates
the tremor, the residual
heat the struggle of two
wanting to move.

Where will they take us, she thinks
there is only so much room to move
so much water to displace and cities
to sink, where will we go and will it stop?

She presses her hand to the floor
in the apartment in the small living room
and imagines she can feel the heat from below
the neighbours breathing, cycling oxygen and carbon dioxide
the blood and mineral stores
just like the core of the earth
small flecks of iron propelling blood
to trap oxygen to push carbon to ensure that breath
continues; that a hand might be warm to the touch
or a cheek, her cheek, as she places it against the wood
floors, listening to hear someone breathe down below

When they make love, she can hear them
bodies grinding against bodies, bones
hot under the pressure, the tremor of
everything that has come before and she thinks
it’s the weight of history that pushes the plates
so they are both loving and wearing away at
the core of what keeps this whole thing together
the whole hot heart of the earth in there
keeping everything together, just waiting
for the day when it can finally let go
let all the plates slide home and all the cities sink,
taking all the lovers with them, a new sea
of oxygen and carbon, the way bones in the ground
keep giving long after extinction. 

as it comes

this great silence of morning is what i cherish the most, the softening of the sky, the ease with which light fulfills expectation, the closest to silence i can get. and though i love the night, we are often at odds. there are many shadows and when the windows are darkened with the exhaustion of having taken so many steps, it makes me worry and i get tired and i get static; i can hardly move. but in the morning there is still a chance, you can see it in the dawning lights of all the other apartments in the back alley - the first cup of coffee being brewed in my kitchen is another first cup of coffee in the kitchen down below across the alley. i can't see the sunrise from my kitchen but i can see the aftermath, the long-reaching streaks of pink and diluted purples; even the chill in the sky is nothing but residue, a calmness to jump from. if i said i wanted to stay here forever, i would be lying because it would turn, as all things do, and the hours come regardless of movement. the earth keeps on spinning so that everything moves, even if i stay still, even if i hold my breath. but i appreciate the mornings, for the idea that all things can be good.