She's mending a fairy tale— “Snowqueen of Texas,” The Mamas & The Papas
The Snowqueen of Bellingham is only born when you say,
I thought you loved snow.
You talk a big game about the snow in West Virginia.
Here, you say
you’re cold.
*
We drink hot cocoa when we want to hold
each other and on the anniversary of the day
we met. We pick up your prescription and
make a pitstop at Starbucks, dribble lukewarm chocolate like liquid bread
crumbs from faux-fur mittens.
Outside sliding glass doors, hummingbirds swallow slushed sugar
water with visible gulps, outlines of stilt beaks
contorting like cartoons.
Bulky ice cube hearts beat evenly and protrude, throbbing,
thawing.
Our cats leave pawprints three stories from the ground.
*
Somewhere else, there are featherweight kittens
purple
wet
quiet
in disintegrating Little Caesars boxes,
HOT N’ READY
on a dilapidated back porch encased indefinitely in splintering ice.
*
The Snowqueen of Bellingham doesn’t ask about the old green house, and
I sow twigs into the center of her head with snow-solid gloves on the edge
of the parking lot. You fan out her dress with frosted pine needles.
Boiling sugar water on spaghetti-splashed stove,
we are a humming hit this winter. Word spreads, rose-cheeked beak
to beak. Can’t get a drink like this anywhere else in town.
*
CLEAN YOUR CHIMNEYS
says the South Whatcom Fire Authority, but we are only driving by for the show
of weighted branches: polar white on wood, raw walls creaking, splinters before warm,
then cold, then warm
again.
Besides, our lease states that the fireplace is just for looks. We hang our snow-sodden gloves
wherever.
*
My brother sends pictures of six-foot gutter icicles with half-
melted pizza boxes in the background.
Above, I almost see wheezing cough-
clouds of chimney smoke.
*
We listen to The Mamas & The Papas on your record player and catnap.
I hand you hot cocoa and tell you
I’m cold.
I’m cold.