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Treeline
Leave me with hockey skate memories, my stomach all gnarled because
I
know I have done better, but it would be nice to hear you. Longing
like
a screwcap, the part where the milk gets crusty when past the
expiration. I could have just smoked past, leaving, never turning,
as if
you belonged to the landscape.
Whirl
Her son skated by her, spun, then went fast again and scraped a
blade
against the surface, stopping himself, and a man tripped over him
and
fell into a wail. But then the man got up, fixing his tie, sniffing
up
the snot from his nose—he wore Styrofoam, a cheesehead, and
Jingle
Bells played over everyone on speakers. Kids in scarves held onto
the
rails some. She bent, aiming ahead and skating faster, feeling the
cold
on her skin and watching her son coming from behind her, skating
backwards, forwards, around. He wore a hat and said for her to look.
Mom. Look at me! he said, as if he were ten again, or seven, fifteen,
even, him again at two once, pulling on her leg and not letting
go until
she took his grip and made him go away from her and to the one at
daycare. She went faster, trying to keep up, running into a man
again
like he did. They all collided, over and into each other, flat and
up
and tangled, and for a while they just stayed there, the snow floating
all around and dancing down into them.
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Kim Chinquee is the author of Oh Baby (Ravenna Press),
the forthcoming collection, Pretty (White Pine Press), and
she is co-editor of the anthology Online Writing: Best of the
First Ten Years (Snowvigate Press). She lives in Buffalo, New
York.
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