South

You promised me no problems

when the temperatures dropped,

assured me that we were prepared.

Holding hands we watched

the great migration south.

With synthetic skins, cryo foods,

and prefab domes, you said we couldn’t lose.

There was little need to leave the domes.

Safe from the fierce glacial winds,

we made love on autumn colored furs.

Yet you were the first to grow restless,

to stand all night at the southern window

following the great move of stars.

We shared the bitter smoke of silence

until one morning, you were gone.

I waited for you, my fingers

tracing love symbols on the icy glass.

I slept with the red wing of your guitar.

Then moon-shadow tall, you came home.

Inside the door, I didn’t know your eyes.

This year, I read while you play solitaire.

Our conversations are textured with frost.

I ache for your laughter,

the taste of grass on your skin,

a bouquet of crocuses in a blue vase.

Marge Simon

Marge Simon has won the Bram Stoker Award, the Rhysling Award, Elgin, Dwarf Stars and Strange Horizons Readers’ Awards; she serves on the HWA Board of Trustees, maintains a newsletter column featuring dark poets, is the second woman to be acknowledged as a Grand Master Poet of the SFPA, and is on the board of the Speculative Literary Foundation.