Winter's Heart

A poem about a mother losing her child.

Winter's Heart

Fransivan MacKenzie

Cradled in the arms of winter is a heart of a woman,

electric with longing for the warmth of the sun

that has so long abandoned her

the way the snow abandons the heavens

to fulfill the kids' sparkly holiday dreams

on a Christmas night.

 

You never know what floods the mind of

this daughter of the sky,

with her hands always bleeding from

holding way too many rose stems

to bring over the grave

of what once was her child -

and will always be hers although no

longer alive,

her fingers now scarred

from trying to catch the shimmering

pine needles of time.

 

She watches the nimbus clouds hover

over this city

cloaked in static silence and white,

the sleet shedding tears she'll never

learn how to cry.

She taps the black bars of her window

and stares at the stretch of infinitely dead things

mirroring the ebony of her eyes -

all of them aweary sentient beings

waiting for summer to arrive.

Author's Note

You may check out more of my pieces here: https://linktr.ee/fransivanmackenzie_