Suddenly I was staring into the dark,
the ceiling floating above the bed
just discernable in the gloom.
Outside, the bare trees rattled
like loose bones in a bag.
Inside, the house creaked
in complaint at the weight
of the frozen air clotting on the windows,
provoking prisms from the simple minded moon.
Mom's breathing drew me out of my cover's cocoon
to where she stood at the second story's window
staring out at the street lamp's
luminescent cone. His car, recently returned,
squatted in the light, the cooling engine
crackling like brittle sticks snapped
across a knee, the windshield frosting as we
watched his beetled back, just visible,
slumped over the steering wheel, stuporous
in the frozen night.
We stood while our warm
breath frosted circles on the glass,
the heat from our arms where we leaned
against each other binding us like gravity,
holding us as we mothed around the candle flame
of simply going back to bed,
the incandescence of which left me panting
and explained the unshed tears in her eyes
when she looked at me and said I should
go get the sonofabitch before
he froze to death.
