Ed Brickell
Thaw
Years ago, we separately watched love struggle for breath, slip away. Nearly two thousand miles apart, strangers to each other. Today, on a white morning in southern Maine, tears as I read the valentine I wrote you while at home. Then laughter at my ridiculous poem. Wrapped in each other last night, snow brightening our bedroom window.
What we experienced those years apart in the silent times we cannot fully share. So many ways for tears to be. Grief as one kind of love, the surprise of hurt hearts blowing open again as another. How our lips and tongues move slow and remembering, daring our way forward.
Yesterday, snowshoeing behind our cabin—the first time for me, and the straps were too loose. But what better mistake to make over and over than falling into fresh powder, hearing the laughter of someone you love? And then your own message, curled on the coffee table for me to unfurl. Your knowing I needed a way to keep that day, our shared discovery, woods deep with ice, softening in the sun.
scribbled on birch bark
your impromptu valentine
now my bookmark
About the Author
A 2025 Best of the Net nominee for poetry, Ed Brickell lives in Dallas, Texas. His poems have most recently appeared or will appear soon in The Harvard Advocate, Delta Poetry Review, Susurrus, and MORIA, among others. He is currently working on his first chapbook, Wonderful Copenhagen.