Joanne Proulx

my phone rings my daughter is calling from the park behind our building “come down” she says “the ice is perfect” at night we break quarantine and escape our glassy nest in the daylight hours we call our mothers our friends in France, our sons and sisters just to hear them say I’m having soup for dinner or today I saw a beautiful grey rabbit in the yard their voices—how could we have forgotten? fools to believe comments pecked onto screens offered the same sort of miracle

in 20 point, all caps red, the sign in the hall instructs us to let the elevator pass if someone is already inside yet for days the doors have opened onto spot-lit emptiness, gleaming brass handrails and a whiff of lemon-scented ammonia

if each story of a high-rise is 12 feet in height and a family of three lives on the 11th floor how far is their fall back to earth

simple math for complex times we’re all homeschoolers now studying exponential growth curves the behavior of skittish mammals in fresh captivity the force required to ventilate a drowning lung or dash the hardest heart open into kindness I descend ____ feet to the lobby outside the world empty as the elevator the moon subbing in for the sun

a digger of dirt I want to press my sterile hands to every surface French kiss the light post dosey doe with the willow bathe in the thawing canal my daughter waits in the park by a puddle skimmed with spring ice we thrill at the give the toes of our boots pressed to its surface her hand casually resting on my shoulder we offer up the full weight of our bodies teasing our luck, shrieking as it cracks we are all wet-footed fledglings now praying that the ice will hold us