A young woman had wrapped her knee
in a black cloth brace. She said that
The weather, when the cold wind comes,
hurts her leg. The pain is core.
I said that the cold flares my emotional scars,
and turbulent storms, black swirling clouds,
make me hyper minutes before they arrive,
like deep green tea in cups upside down.
She said that her mother’s bones ache
in every place they’ve been broken.
I did not ask how she’d broken so many bones,
Or if she’d been thrown by a terrible storm.
Outside, wind sprinted to enwrap the trees,
Whipping their branches around with wrestled greeting.
The cold wake of the wind slipped
into the cracks in the mind of our bones,
our old storms.
