Sam Avrett
Reflection
The snow curls round the house, folding around air like smoke except white and falling like the opposite of combustion and with pockets of nothing twisted into spirals and dervishes, absences of nameable things. Against the snow, your reflection. It’s night and the light inside and outside compete against the window. I can’t see the garden anymore but it’s out there, the winter remnants outlining what was and what will be.
The news today was terrible. Headlines saying nothing, the silences appalling, and in all my searching, an absence of words about where you are. The outline of events is clear but I am left untethered.
The dairy farmer is named by his cows before they are ever milked, the hunter labelled by the prey before he sets out to hunt. Our country is said to be defined by its ideals, so maybe I was defined by you before we even met, by what I intended and the shape of my needs before I even knew them.
I close my eyes and I see you, I open my eyes and see the snow, and the absences compete, naming who I am by who I am missing.
Sam Avrett lives in a rural county in upstate New York, with dogs, husband, and a startling amount of canned and preserved food stocked away for the winter.
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