all my marbles

In the wintertime, I hibernate. I think still, dead, cold thoughts. The cold inhabits me – I am a house of shoddy construction work. There are sharp winds whistling down my hallways – there are wet pools of slush thickening in all my corners, behind my knees and beneath my armpits. 

I am not at home in the dark. Even my body, usually so familiar, is too soft. I fall into it, softly, like snow. Lost under layers that are also too soft – too soft to move through. Heavy fabrics that suffocate my closet and bury me, too. 

I wait and I wait and I wait for spring. When the April rain melts the slush away and carves my body back into the shape of itself, will words wake in my head like bird song?