White Silhouettes

By Erin Rhoda, 2009 George Mitchell Scholar.

Erin Rhoda is a writer and poet from Washington, Maine, who is pursuing a master's in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin as a George Mitchell Scholar.

We drifted through the city

as two mourning doves might spend their lives:

flitting, halting, parting for minutes

but always nearby.

Snowflakes fell as night gathered,

and we strolled cautiously

on new ice. We were engulfed

by the stones of buildings

and a banjo player's song.

In the nightfall

we went down

and down farther

to the water and the boats.

We climbed aboard a yacht,

unmanned and brooding in the waves,

and sat on the upper deck

in the last splinters of sun,

while the clouds spilled snow

upon our wings.

It was visible in the night,

smoothing the cars and buildings

to their basic forms. I imagined

us encased in it all, two bumps

on a stranger's boat. I never really

loved you. Still I thought of us

years later in rocking chairs

on our front lawn, wrapped

in blankets and becoming pure white.

Falling snow isn't silent but a whispering.