as crunch of snow is replaced by squelch of boot in mud,
taut cold-pink knuckles by loose strawberry hard-candy sunset,
deep cavernous sleep by warm hair and a giddy heart,
as we trot downhill with the sun at our backs like we could be everything,
map the paths that coil like fingers on guitar frets,
swing our held arms, the golden children of a year that hid its face,
I go back to that night in the Yorkshire bedroom, in December,
with the butterfly on the curtain, so huge I feel its fluttering all the way from the bed.
like a tiny tremulous headwind but replace the head with the heart.
the life-noise of the house settling with the evening hours and me the only witness to her
presence.
the red of her wings had me thinking of monarchs, but she was not queen, only messenger.
she confirmed everything to me. how the snow is falling backwards.
how the colours are lining up. how she wants to be here.
how I have angels in my ears, and on my back, crawling like small slow creatures across a
road.
how they nibble my shoulder blades, readying me, and I mistake it just for the months passing,
as they do. as the manuscript paper of the naked branches turns into canopies of arpeggios,
I think, those angels are rushing the calendar,
like how we chase this warmth going past the screen of horizons and back,
like how we turn everything into an event.