My breath is a metronome
each inhale, right,
each exhale, left,
my skis spooning their way
through a shake of powder
cracking hard on the ice below,
Quail Face now scarred and wrinkled.
It’s my last run
a bad omen,
and fear sluices through me
as I hear a snap
and I am flying.
And I am rolling downhill,
my white linen dress
sticking to my legs,
my father yelling something about bees,
and there are yellow flowers
and blue ones
and then my dress is a robe.
And I am The Dude,
and I am soaring through night
and I am Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
A trill of a flute signals
the turn of a bedknob
and I am a canopy bed
and wind is ruffling
my Technicolor curls.
My face is numb
snow in my nose
and metal in my mouth,
my skis shuddering past
like heavy metal mice,
their brakes frozen; up.
I am thinking about stars
and colors
and then about breathing
which seems impossible
in the dark wetness
my head is swimming in.
I am vaulting off the high dive
and I am fifteen,
blue everywhere,
the sky and pool
a hodgepodge of cerulean,
I am enveloped in the swift whomp
of water.
The tie-dye of the surface
is blurred as if through plastic
like the stuff that adorns
my mother’s lasagnas,
crouching in the freezer.
And I am swimming to the air
and it rushes in like wings
and I am breathing
BREATHING
and I am blue in the white.
Lucy Florence is a snow lover, word weaver, and perpetual traveler from Tahoe City. She has previously been published in Read This Magazine, Poets Letter, and Edinburgh University’s The Journal. She is praying for powder!
