ZANZIA EKLUND
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WINTER SUN It’s so cold that icicles are hanging from Baby’s beard. He won’t shave. I’m glad he didn’t shave. I told him to because those whiskers are ticklish as heck, but I’m glad he didn’t. Because gosh, it’s cold, and those icicles there are coming straight from his breathing, straight from his nostrils. Could you imagine those on his naked skin? His face is flushed beneath all that hair, and his mustache twitches. He’s smiling. He’s holding a disc of ice, a disc the shape of our green glazed birdbath. He’s explaining water structure and molecular structure and how hailstones form in the sky. I’m dizzy. I can’t breathe properly because all my love for him is plugging up my trachea and choking me. My eyelashes flutter, and I’m not flirting but maybe this is why people flutter their eyelashes, maybe it’s because when you’re so in love and you can’t breathe, you start to feel a little faint. The top crust of the snow isn’t as soft as snow should be, but that’s because it hasn’t snowed in a few days and the snow crust is really ice crust. The back of my head breaks the crust with a light pop and my cap slides up and the ice bites the nape of my neck. His concern, it is sickening. He looks sick and it makes me feel sick because I’m fine, I just want to hear him talk. I don’t want to see anything but joy and wonder on that man’s face. And he kneels, bent over me, red beard and red cheeks dripping with worry. I can see his icicles and beard melt away, I can see the clean ruddy face that I stained with concern the first night, the night we met, the night I stumbled on the riverbank and my head hit a rock. I wish I could still see that face, the one that had only witnessed one accident instead of half a dozen, and then maybe I could will myself to still my heart, I could will my lungs to fill to capacity. But this face, right in front of me, is the one I have. There’s no fooling him, he knows how lovesick I am. I’ve fainted many times in his presence. I awake in his bed, in our bed, tucked beneath four quilts, a bag of hotrocks at my feet, a big black warm dog draped over my chest. The sun and crystal-white snow shine together through the window into my eyes. It’s so clear out, I can see the neighboring mountain’s peak. Baby’s by the hearth, poking the embers, bringing water to boil. I groan, not because I
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Volume 16 • 2021
