&

By MEL ARTHUR

it begins but doesn’t end with the earth,
only a memory you don’t keep
anymore,
because the first snow was
clouding your mind, my camera, the two
green chairs that surrounded us

even
my gloves that were on your hands
because I was cold but you claimed
your fingertips were colder

and there, and also here,
the foggy cloud, the cold
takes from your body
finds mine, and I swallow
its lingerings, let it
travel down my tongue slowly,
deliberately, before I tell you
all choked up,
just how much
I am afraid to own a body
or worse: would you still love me if I was a worm?

and instead of laughing like I
want you to at my dramatic truths as I
wish to call them
, you point
to the chairs first, then your heart where I
assume my never-to-be-seen
worm body will rest or
maybe the body of mine I don’t
always feel close to,
both images becoming
violent and tender like the snow that
keeps entering your nose

since you refuse
to admire it,

and when you
kiss me like you mean it
because I “fell” “accidentally,”
onto the chairs, dragging you with me
into the special snow that covers them
alone

It only means I can have more
and more
of you once again on
my tongue

and so
to keep your memory steady
I murmur with my eyes
that I only
want you to be mine

and I know you
know I meant that I love you so much,
I want to rewrite all that
you know with only me & you & only you
& me

grasping handfuls of snow
all the solid weeping of the world
to throw at each other,
standing under the wedding gazebo
on a night when the ends of the world
are in our outstretched palms

and the green chairs we dance
around, two touching
each other, being
dusted away together, waiting for the
sun to return together

and your memory to become
clear together because I see
the chairs everywhere, every time
because I am looking,
I am.

Writer | Mel Arthur ’25 | marthur25@amherst.edu
Editor | Siani Ammons ’27 | sammons27@amherst.edu