The Composition of Ice..!

There was a Christmas when our family

of five was whittled down to three.

A young girl, a younger boy,

and a man on the brink of breaking.

We drove to Windsor that Christmas.

Spending money we didn’t have,

we ate at fancy restaurants,

and charged it to credit cards.

I felt the threads unravelling,

slipping through my fingers, spilling at my feet.

There were gaps in the fabric I couldn’t explain.

Moments of lucidity growing fewer and farther between.

Along the shores of the Detroit River,

we fished without lines or hooks,

casting out into frigid waters.

In winter, it’s almost impossible

to judge things like where the shore ends,

the thickness of ice, the depth of water.

Ice breaks and reforms in jagged shards,

most fragile along its fault lines.

A spiderweb of scars that ghost in the moonlight.

The art of breaking.

He thinks it fun to hop across the ice floes,

and urges his children to follow.

He laughs as blocks of ice break free from the shoreline,

leaping at the last minute before the pieces beneath

his feet drift away.

The thrashing of ice and river breaking against the wind drowns out

any protest I could have made.

He is too far out to hear me.

Gage Park, New Year’s Eve.
He keeps slipping from my sight.

It’s dark, and I think in a moment of panic that I’ve lost him.

I’m too small to see over the crowd.

I climb up the concrete ledge leading to the steps of City Hall.

In the sprawling whiteness I see him.

He is gliding across the ice, arms outstretched,

as if skating or praying. He seems happy; I let him be.

I am standing under a street lamp as large snowflakes falling catch the light.

I close my eyes, tears freezing to my face.

It is the closest I ever felt to being forgiven.

This snowglobe moment that frames these fragments...!