From beneath the icefield, longing looks up at the lovers
who—variously meandering, stalling or not, fucking
or not—guess nothing of him. Torturer sometimes. Known
also to have been a savior eventually, hard passage to a life
worth the hardness. You would think longing lived in a space
warmer than an icefield, you would think so. Tragedies are
happening everywhere in the world, beside things that aren’t
technically tragedies, though they include suffering, pain, death
in its more humiliating versions, to remind that some of us
will be less spared, and some will not. Up through the icefield,
longing watches the lovers who, in turn, look down, or away,
laughing. Each time, they miss the icefield for the flowers that,
despite the cold, somehow grow there: distraction’s the bluer,
and more abundant flower, black at the edges. Joy is the other.
This article appeared in the December 1, 2011, issue of the magazine.