Corina

My breath is caught by late winter wind,
a deliberate expulsion of my lungs, to feel more like a smoker
or a locomotive. Neither seem better though.
I miss you more even when you’re across the table

or across the room. I was executed during
a snowball fight, dunked under the snow of my demise.
I shook out my coat from the blinding powder, black hat pulled
down over my eyes. “I don’t have eyes anymore,” I said.

We’re all on the same frozen island, subjected to
our burgeoning youth. “I can’t feel my fingertips anymore,”
Alyssa said, bundled up like a desert raider on Tatooine.
I shook your hair as if I were an annoying brother or something.

Your father’s aftershave still looks the same. And I almost forgot
about Kinai, your adorable shiba, and you you kissed his forehead.
Maybe these words are just meant for spaciousness, to help
make you feel poetically bigger than the world, like a transcendence.

I could have reached for your mitten-veiled hand on the way to the garage,
after my execution. We watched Star Wars with your father and cat.
I asked him how his Christmas went and he said, “She was here,”
nodding to you, “and that was enough to make it great.”

We both smiled at you smiling. I couldn’t help but glance at you,
in your favorite movie a watching chair, and see what
your father aludded to: the purity of his daughter,
the warmth of your eyes,

clear and blind to how I want to feel.