Lindsey Warren

The Blue over the Snow

 

One evening behind the convent I was a blue, and I shone from within the snow, then over the snow, the snow that read to me several lights before silencing them.  Above me was another blue that didn’t remember so much, or carry any dirt in its feet, the doorways of the convent looked at me and thought darker.  The yard touched my cheek, my hair, I held in my elbow the space where it cried as I became less and less, less and less vision, less and less against the third blue of night.

 

In my hand was the candle, the candle of life, or of believing in life when all around presses in death shapes, disillusionment.  Yes, this was a candle that ate nightmares’ snow and left one to agree again with possibility, a word I struggled to recall how to spell, how many seas pass through it, how many earths as green shoulders, and I passed through it to the other side of the candlelight’s sound, and I took a step forward.

 

I stepped toward myself, the blue over the snow.  I stepped toward the candle, its hands in my hands.

 

Night came out from inside the convent, the drawers in the rooms opened to the stars and the fires they gave the spaces within to remember.  Then night contracted to make room for the candle, the candle that was its eye, it saw all the feelings of the convent, of the city, and of the fields beyond.  And the snow, it knew me as blue once more upon the ground though it sang of the air, and its silver melt.

 

Night’s country was stones that gave themselves to hear the flickering.  I was there, I heard it, too.