Winterizing by Michael Smith

Winterizing

The winter the snowplow
ran over our dog
I sealed the windows
against the cold
with cellophane.

We couldn’t afford
new storm windows
and it seemed simple enough
an idea, but the sheeting
tangled and balled up
and stretching it across the large windows
and getting it to stay long enough
to tighten with a hair dryer
was like restoring
virginity. I kept thinking

if I don’t pay attention
I’ll smother in my own ill-spun
chrysalis, and always with the crinkling
and sticking there was this carnal sidebar
of death and meat and the sick practicality
of preserving something for later.

I managed to make most of the
sheets as tight
as membranes but found that the least
sound from the bare woods
would drum on them
and amplify what truly didn’t
need amplification: sonic booms, the scratching
somewhere
of small dying things.

It was the year my wife mastered
the gesture of touching
her throat
when she had doubts,
and it was the year
I wagered on everything.

Now that we are here
in a warmer place and time,
we don’t have the winter need
to whisper, and yet
I like to whisper. I remember
the important sound

of a twig snapping somewhere
at 3 A.M. and waking and waiting

with dread and hope
for something else to happen.
I whispered and she slept
and the birch bones rattled.

*

Michael Smith’s work has appeared in several publications, including Iowa Review, Seneca Review, Northwest Review, Pembroke Review, Water-Stone Review, American Writers Review (finalist), Phoebe, Blue Unicorn, Avalon Literary Review, Bicoastal Review (forthcoming), Synkroniciti, Blood and Bourbon, Anacapa Review, Mad Persona Magazine (forthcoming), among others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Arizona and lives in Pomona, CA.