Winter Before a Thirty-Year Marriage Ends by Maria Surricchio

Winter Before a Thirty-Year Marriage Ends

       with a line by Seamus Heaney

Snow beyond the window
fills every corner—empty
of sound—piles in restless
drifts like the train
that just passed through
the town and didn’t stop,
the wisps the planes leave
across the sky. Into the room
where she sits—orphaned
in a little patch of light—
he steps, his lips against
her cheek are warm
and dry. She has forgotten
he can be warm.

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Maria Surricchio is originally from the UK and now lives near Boulder, Colorado. A life-long lover of poetry, she began writing in 2020 after a long marketing career. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in Blackbird, Salamander, Chicago Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, On the Seawall, The Comstock Review and elsewhere. She has a BA in Modern Languages from Cambridge University and holds an MFA from Pacific University.