Winter

By Stacie Eirich

So much patience is required 
with each passing day, time spreading before us 
in quiet resistance, pressing against us 
as we fill the hours with things 
that ease the emptiness. 

She sits quietly, pressing stickers into patterns 
and brushes into canvas, focused and willing, 
listening to me read poems, letting me 
cry over them. 

We both laugh when we do this, me over 
both sorrow and beauty, her over 
how I read poems while her Dad commentates 
her brother’s soccer game via text message
as if it’s the World Cup. 

We smile at the normality of this 
and I feel a tightness in my chest, notice the sun 
sinking lower at the window and suggest 
it’s time for a walk. She packs up with a readiness at this, 
part of our new routine that, after a month’s time, has begun 
to feel studied. 

Her step is stronger now, her balance steadier 
as she carries her palette and canvas down 
the butterfly-filled hall. Her voice is louder now, her smile easier 
as she names her newest creation. 
She gives everything a name. 
Marvin and Mollie and Jason and Kara, 
Christopher and Charles and Special Teddy and Jenny— proper names 
for every stuffy and squishy, every squirky and squashmallow.   
They stick in her memory like lyrics to songs, 
hidden and recalled months from the time 
she first christened them. “I still have them,” she told me today, 
recounting how she listened to the Hamilton album 
through her latest MRI. 

She means that she knows them, that the lyrics 
aren’t lost to her, lost like other memories 
have been. 

We round the circular sidewalk and she notices 
the different kinds of bark on the trees, the graffitied signs 
on the buildings, the way the ice hasn’t melted 
in the shadows. 

She wants to stick her shoes in it, and I stick mine in too, 
watching the different patterns 
our sneakers make. 

We walk another lap and count the police cars, 
their blue lights blinking
into the falling sunlight. 

She fixes my mask onto my cheeks 
as we go back inside, smiles 
as we pick up our mail from the desk and see 
the Queen’s Royal stamp 
across one of the letters. She laughs again 
as we ride the elevator, 
it jolts upwards, my heart jumping along 
with its wonky jig. 

She does her own jig down the hall, her heart 
pulling mine through our wreathed front door, 
pink and yellow flower petals 
encircling us as if 
it were already spring.

Stacie Eirich is a mother of two, poet & singer. Her poems have recently appeared in Last Leaves, The Journey (Paddler Press), Synkroniciti Magazine and Valiant Scribe Literary Journal, among others. She is currently living in Memphis, TN, caring for her daughter through cancer treatments at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. www.stacieeirich.com.