The snow is falling

The snow is falling. The snow is falling
and I didn’t know if I’d see snow again,
so my tears are falling too, and I think,
no, I feel this world is made of two
things—love and love’s absence,
and in every moment I make the choice
to not love or to love, and what is love
if not paying so close attention
I notice my tears stop in the valley
of my laugh lines to forgive every year
I complained about the cold, to thank
my heart for finally growing into its
warmth because the snow is falling
and it may as well be the summer
I learned my windpipe was
a single wind chime, and I am
songless without another
gusting their voice against mine,
call it an argument, fine, if we are
both listening–it’s still music,
listen, if we want to grow out our lifelines
we must start seeing our lifelines
on other people’s hands,
every time a human heart breaks
it breaks into 8.2 billion pieces,
so cart the quicksand
to the potter’s wheel to make
something of what tried to unmake us,
not one of us spent all that time
in the cocoon only to become butterfly
knives, please life, dull whatever
sharpness is left of me, let me be
what I have always wanted to be—
too soft for this world, too weak
in the knees for beauty to have
any capacity to ignore the books
running back to the forest, piling
themselves one by one atop each other
til they are tall as redwood trees and
growing leaves, we could do that too,
people I mean, you and I, we
could do that too, I know
because the snow is falling
and my heart is melting
like a snowflake on god’s tongue,
sometimes words are so loud
it hurts my ears to write them down,
but I wrote these down because I didn't
know if I’d see snow again,
and you didn’t either, but maybe
you didn’t know you didn’t know,
and the snow is falling, the snow is
falling, the snow is falling,
the snow, the snow, the snow
the snow, the snow