‘first melt’

Photographer Ayla Agha is a recent graduate of NYU. For her Senior Thesis: End of the World: Air, Earth, Fire, and Bodies of Water in Between, she traveled to Ushuaia, Argentina. The above photo is from that research trip, shot with a Canon EOS Rebel.

first melt

It is unmistakably over. The soft

snow that had fallen is melting and sending

the walls all humming, sending me to bed

with the heat from my skin radiating.

Quieter than grief. It is not the season

for new growth—there are apples in a bowl,

skin-sunken with age. And dust on the floor.

And all the things yet to come.

There was a moment I didn’t know was

an ending; there was a door that I

closed without looking; and the lock

is somewhere clicking—

in the back of my mind

always clicking—

reminding me just how irreversibly the snow

has left dead grass and bare trees

to mourn its momentary being.

Elliot Mevissen is an undergraduate poet and artist with a fascination for the sky. Their favorite pastimes are knitting, figure skating, and marveling at the world.