by Erik Moellering

There is much
that we do not understand about each other,
even after five years in the same creased bed,
pore to pore on
the cold mornings.

So, when she says
she wants to move north, somewhere
with an appropriately deep and long winter,
I don’t know if this is metaphor,
or fancy,

or what, if anything,
I should worry about. Because that is what I do,
and how far north, I ask, and how much snow, and

does she realize how many kinds of precipitation
fall down?
The hundreds of Eskimo words needed to ease
the white anvil of boredom?
And her straight smile,

like a wedge of light
at the far end of an empty warehouse,
frightens me further, panicking as I am
to exit this storm,
swatting at the greying blizzard.

I wait, and I listen,
but I never learn how deep,
how interminably long the winter must be
for her to feel proper recompense for
the mindless bounty of summer.

Erik Moellering teaches English at A-B Tech Community College in Asheville, NC, where he also performs in a variety of theatrical productions.