‘SICK OF WINTER’

Em Harriett is a photographer from New England with a focus on nature, color, texture, and line. Her work has appeared in Oyster River Pages, F-Stop Magazine, and Kelp Journal, among others. Find more of Em's photography at emharriett.com.

SICK OF WINTER

A house is an instrument

when the temps drop this low.

This faucet on, that faucet, the shower drips,

the doors closed to trap the heat

to hold it close like a melody hummed.

In the basement, the gauge on our oil tank reads

half full, the pipes wrapped in foam.

The generator clicks on once a week,

just to remind us it is there. Not just —

it is there, it is part of this as much as I am,

another essential key on this habitable saxophone,

a note that rings clear and constant as the sting

of this wind feasting on exposed skin, it’s howl

a beer-bellied fan of mostly the early stuff screeching,

“Encore! Encore!”

Calloused, road-worn, tired

of playing these songs. The repetition,

night after night of

drip, drip, drip and the groans

of the earth shifting under the weight

of all this darkness crowdsurfing to the procedural hum

of another soulless guitar solo.

We dream of the day

we no longer need to do this.

When the night thins to something pale

and flaccid like death becoming.

When birds become the songs and the house

sits lazy and out of tune, bright air flowing through

its hollows, a note that rings clear and constant as the sting

of the sun feasting on exposed skin, the cicadas chanting in rhythm:

“One. More. Song. One. More...”

And, like the edge of rain turned sleet turned snow turned

rain again, we will, inevitably, in delight, succumb.

We’ll play one more.

Zack Andresen writes fiction and poetry from his home in the Hudson Valley, NY.