no scars on me, lass
you said, walking away
and I could see clear, too
your enamelled composure, white
flawless as a wedding night sheet
magic doors
in the mountainside closed over anything
I might have dared to say
beat
as I might at that unbroken surface
I am the child in the snow
stripped bare of argument and
shivering I revisit
the plain where new snow hides all
remembered footprints (and memory is not
to be trusted)

in the all
round white, hospital
white
             my mouth
             is full of snow