Her arms are rivers in waiting.
She rubs roofs, mistakes torches for icicles,

surrounds her house with water. From inside her till,
she prays in sharp fragments, throws glass,

scatters along the stairs. Her life has become
something faint studded with autumn quills

and hummed memorials. All that’s left
is to be set in darkening cement.

She wants to be frozen in waves
or to be like the man who breathes fire—

always proclaimed a local wonder.
Ice, of course, is melting. Everything is breaking.