by Amanda Miska
After losing, it can feel like your whole world has gone
quiet. The stillness after snowfall. A single car wrapped around a tree,
empty. Of all the lives I imagined for myself,
this was never one.
In memory, he walks towards me encircled by flurries, backlit
by a midwestern streetlamp, his hunched shoulders bracing
for something I let myself believe was just the cold.
I wish I could freeze in the moment before impact:
just before he turns toward me on the bed, I trace
gentle infinities on his back through weary flannel.
Another memory: I am small, lying face up in knee deep snow,
looking heavenward at the stars, and as more flakes begin to fall
in seeming slow motion, I feel like I am rising,
an angel in a snowsuit.
Wasn’t I too young to be out in the cold dark alone?
Where was everyone?
Am I remembering things wrong,
like he always said?
Was he walking away from me all this time,
but my chasing felt like moving? Toward
some kind of Heaven. Wrong direction, short legs straining
to match impossibly long strides, heart ever-pounding.
That isn’t Love, little angel.
Amanda Miska lives, writes, and creates in the Philadelphia suburbs. She is the former editor of Split Lip Press and Magazine. Her work can be found at The Rumpus, Salon, Catapult, Hobart, Wigleaf, Midnight Breakfast, decomP, and elsewhere. Her hybrid nonfiction, Nuptial Flight, was listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2020.