Staci Halt

February Breath

Near the fence the plow has cut through drifts,
ripped up the slumbering lawn.

Mangled corpses of wildflowers lie on exposed grass,
where not long ago they’d gaudied the forest path.

There is so much I haven't told you. It piles,
smothering the unsaid with more unsaid,
while the urgency bleeds steadily,
unnoticed as an internal wound—

My February breath hovers
like a devoted crepuscular spirit.

When I stoop to grasp an icy stalk, tear the crown
off a bald Black-eyed Susan, it does not come
away in my hand. The stem bends.

So I yank hard, and pause
when I see it: green. Pathetic thing
assumed survival guaranteed
if it only kept its head down;
if only it didn’t make a fuss.

It should have seen this coming.

I’m no cruel executioner who’d leave it
hanging, half-decapitated. I twist
it like an apple stem, chanting A B C D

As a girl I’d think, I’ll marry someone
whose name begins with D—
Now all I want to say to you is futile, expired.
Did not keep well.

Deed done, I toss the head into the muddied snow;
call back the dog who roamed too far.
I envy the convenient snow burial
of his tracks, his missteps so thoroughly erased.

I want to tell you about the green I saw
inside the stem I first thought dead.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Staci Halt's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, West Trade Review, Narrative Magazine and others. She is mom to six rad humans and a slew of cats. She teaches and writes in Boston, for now.