On the first
night of their first winter. They held each other, not
from love, but in fear of trembling.

On the second night of winter,
they realised the silence that settled
between their bodies
did not necessarily have to be the texture of snow.

In the view from my house, the wrestlers who live next door
are playing football with beercans again.
I wash my feet in the creek behind my house.
I live here now.
In the view from your house, there are fewer leaves.
There will be none when the days grow colder.
Then, perhaps, you,
meeting your city of black, wet snow,
will abandon the view
from a balcony overgrown with cigarette butts
and learn to look out from other windows.

Months after I left
New York, I would rewrite, and write,
and write it again. Till in the poem,

I would be able to walk down
the staircase, undo the lock
and step

out into the outer air. The poem
would end like this: with a door

clicking shut,
and then the sound

of a woman singing with a voice like dusk.