There is impossibility, yes. There is the knowing
inside and the distance of mountains or snow
or the silence or low voice of a man who is
outside. Why can’t it just be the joining of two
breaths, two bodies? Why can’t astonishment
last? I read the test and almost hyperventilated,
laughing and crying at once, looking onto
the rows of storm-wrecked white birches bent
to the ground, not thinking of the land
as anything more than the ice and the snow,
nothing loving out there, nothing slow
moving or tender with which to compare the nothing
that is—was—my stomach heavier beneath my hand.

—Chelsea Woodard

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