Even under an inch of meltwater,

midwinter having called summer to mind,

a cleated bootprint persists in gray snow;

a declaration of cowed love once stuffed

in a mailbox... she was "flattered". So there.

I'd spilled like candies to the kitchen floor

and now I wonder what she did with it,

that letter. Years later, If I should find

that it's even at the very bottom 

of some desk drawer, scattered bodies might rest,

as a clutch of colored eggs, in a nest

of my family's dust and woven hair,

at last, under and warmed by the stove;

spring no longer mistaken for autumn.