from INDIANA REVIEW
The first hard freeze, an owl beyond the twig at the window like the shadow of a thought across the mask of a face, and whatever it is that will unmask the girl who masks the old woman who is turning the tap, comes crawling up from timber on a night like this, comes wandering like wind when everything else is frosty and still: the deer, unbuckled, the field a matted bulge, and the flashlight’s beam that will not come to light the fires of their eyes.
On a night like this, the old woman will think secretly of the dead in their graves, of satin and of wood and of a dark that pours itself into a vessel it will never fill. On a night like this, and in thoughts like these, she is not alone.
The compost hoards its clump of heat; frost welds the chain to the gate, throwing sparks.
She will lie down to dreams that scatter ahead of her like snow, but not before she turns the tap one turn, a hammered metal drip drip drip she’ll wake to when a hand not made of hand tests the latch.
Nominated by Indiana Review, Michael Heffernan