One Winter in Vermont
Emily Light
[1]
You understood what could bring a person to leap.
On the snow-covered green, you lit a fire beneath a tree
and your poems became prayers
and every prayer was a lie you hid behind.
What a waste of time. One winter in Vermont
you failed. One winter in Vermont you threw a key from a window
and watched it melt through snow to the ground.
How can you regret the limits you brought with you—
this thin skin, the god you lost in the pines,
the choices tattooed on your fingernails
that would grow out with you—
[2]
Someone jumped out that window, she said
and turned a page, the crackle of the bible’s
thin paper like a fire popping in the candlelight.
Your legs numb beneath you, a bow un-tugged,
a bible and a highlighter where once you’d wanted his skin.
Burlington was meant to be a way out
of the corner you backed yourself into
but you acted the dunce for anyone who could pull you free.
What were you doing, playing good girl while the curtains lolled open
like a licentious invitation in a different language?
Marijuana ghosted under doors like cauldron breath.
You should have opened your mouth. The smell of dead leaves between
the bible’s pages, a scent, a man would later say, that is the same
as deer musk, and a woman’s desire.
[3]
The window was dark, cold to the touch
like everyone was that winter.
You didn’t allow yourself to touch anything
you wanted and draped yourself with the curtains.
A lavender laundry sheet clung to the bedspread,
a bra draped across the pillow, your Christian boyfriend’s
sock limp as a used condom on the nightstand.
You wore this year like grease hardened onto a cold stove.
Close your eyes and begin a prayer that pulses
along with the gale pushing its way through
the building’s stone artifice.
Picture the way down and understand
what could bring a person to leap.
[4]
You wanted the wind to push itself into your sleeves.
Your prayer ended. The bible snapped shut.
What if you never opened it again?
What if, today, you said the thing never said
aloud, if you admitted you lost
the god you’d never actually known
to laughter gushing under doors
like a fresh spring, to boys who said yes, yes,
if instead of throwing the key from the window that night
you’d used it to unlock yourself.
