Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “That Winter I Thought I Would Die” by Amanda Merpaw.

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That Winter I Thought I Would Die

By Amanda Merpaw

I didn’t want to. I wanted to

crack the window, summon

the year’s smoke,

call the year my year, and in exhaling

become the sky itself.

I wanted to watch the neighbour

naked in her kitchen. Or not

watch but notice, tell you

or choose not to tell you

and keep it to myself.

Those mornings, you made me

coffee. Brought it to bed.

I expected the milk

to be fresh, my throat warmed.

You congested yourself

with hope of my touch below

your shirt, the potential

of my flossed mouth.

I told you to draw the curtains.

I told you I was leaving.

That winter I was disappearing.

Did you see? My hair on

the maple tree, frozen

in the eaves, knotted

in the cardinal’s beak. I told you

I was shedding. I said the body

writes itself beneath the listening.

My belly burning. My chest

unlatching. It was one month

then another, then again.

I was right about the business

of persistence. That winter

I shored my body

and its quiet on the precipice.

A making. No magic.

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Copyright © Amanda Merpaw

Amanda Merpaw is the author of the collection Most of All the Wanting and the chapbook Put the Ghosts Down Between Us. She has been a finalist for the Montreal Fiction Prize, The Fiddlehead Fiction Contest, and the Poem of the Year contest. Amanda’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in various literary magazines, including Arc Poetry Magazine, The Capilano Review, CV2, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. She is currently Associate Poetry Editor at Plenitude Magazine.

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