Bridget Brush

Migratio

 “And its freezing in Pennsylvania,
And the rest of the birds are in Turks and Kaicos”
Cardinal
-Mt. Joy

You’ve been layering your mornings between blankets and my body
heat. You’ve been quietly counting down

days until Christmas and the times my words have landed
like morning frost—cold against your skin. I cling

to any part of you warm enough to defrost me, tucking
my hands into your waistband. It’s the reason I threw

up in your backyard last week, but I won’t tell you it is.
You think I like the cold, I just got tired of being

hot. I won’t fight with you about what you think is a lack
of ambition, it’s seasonal. The birds are allowed to fly

down to the equator, I think I am allowed to burrow
into my blue. It’s getting bleak here, the kind of February frozen

that calls for flushing ice cubes and sleeping with shirts inside
out and backwards. This December could kill me

like it killed the first flurries, cold enough to fall
but not to mean anything.  

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Bridget Brush has previously been published in Third Wednesday Magazine, Poetry South Literary Magazine and Ponder Review. She is a student at Salisbury University in the Creative Writing program. In her free time she enjoys spending time outside, listening to good music and working in her community.