More People Die in the Winter | Caroline Sutphin
We’re huddled at the hilltop, defensive hunch against
January’s meander goodbye, still lingering in the doorway.
Each shiver reminds me of the run in my hose crackling
up my leg only just concealed by my skirt hem,
calling my hand like the tide to the shore with each
Please Rise and Please Be Seated, the anxious smoothing
to keep it hidden beneath black polyester. My gray gloves
bleed splotchy as I wipe my nose. Blue Ridge wind
rolls through my lungs and slashes my eyes for looking up
at the elder oak tree hanging over the grave.
And as its permanence arrests my gaze, holding me steady
like a single blade of grass coated in dawn frost,
the last dead leaf that held on through Thanksgiving
and Christmas and three snowfalls, snaps like a gunshot —
free on the cloud currents, raptured away to heaven
before I knew to miss it. My eyes drop in shame
for the great oak’s nakedness, for the spray of flowers
trembling on the coffin, for the elastic thread unravelled
up my thigh. Up here on the hill, all this flesh living and
dead is so, so terribly, exposed.
about the author:
Caroline Sutphin is a poet currently living and writing in Boston. She grew up on a farm in Appalachia, and this experience informs much of her work. She received her MFA from Western Kentucky University and today works for a nonprofit while maintaining a YouTube channel (@CarolineSutphin) on all things literary. Her work has appeared in Prism Review, Rappahannock Review, Ponder Review, and Mount Hope, among other publications.